Ranma, the Naive Succubus 04: The Flower War
by Narsil
Summary: Even as Ranma, Nabiki and their allies make progress on some of their problems, a new one comes out of the blue. The overly-competitive sister of their stalker at school, Kuno Kodachi, the Black Rose, has made Akane and "Ranko" her special concern. Rated for high citrus content.
1. Enter the Black Rose!

I do not own anything written by Rumiko Takahashi or Kosuke Fujishima.

* * *

The red-haired succubus floated beside Akane as the youngest Tendo strode along the sidewalk toward the dojo, Ranma smiling at the way her student was almost skipping with the joy she was radiating. They'd had a couple days to make up for Ryoga's late-night visit (and for Ranma to mostly recover from the beating she'd received, she thought, though a wonderful session with her lover had maybe also helped — she was still working out just what her capabilities and limitations were). So in spite of the long boring Monday evening Akane and Ranma in human form spent sitting in mystic circles while Nabiki and Nodoka had chanted in order to strengthen their protections against mystical assault, followed by a long and equally boring Tuesday at school, the succubus was in almost as good a mood as the human girl. The practice session at the park, the nature spirit hiding behind trees, benches, and people while trying to ambush Akane, had gone _very_ well — Akane's newly awakened sense (or perhaps a sense she was newly aware of) was proving even more effective for tracking and detection than sight. Like Ranma's sight when a succubus, it was blocked by anything alive but not by nonliving objects (like Akane's clothes, and the suddenly blushing succubus forced her eyes up to her companion's face).

"Hey, Tomboy, ya did good," the redhead said at last.

Akane glanced out of the corner of her eye toward the spot where she could sense her sensei, face clouding up and joy tingeing with anger at the nickname for a moment before she forced a grin. "Thanks — and I didn't even have Nabiki around to distract you," she jibed back. "I'm a little surprised you did so well, with how late you two stayed up last night."

Ranma's blush deepened, her hand rubbing the back of her neck under her loose hair, happy that the other girl couldn't see her. "Uh, yeah, sorry 'bout that, didn't mean ta keep ya up," she mumbled. "We think it might help me —" _get over that beatin' I took._ "Ah ..."

"Why didn't we wait after school for Nabiki, anyway?" Akane asked after a moment, when it became obvious her sensei (and friend?) wasn't going to finish the sentence.

"Nabiki had ... business ta take care of, and —" _and I didn't want ta be there as a human, 'cause it'd look like I'm the muscle fer her blackmail. And it'd be even worse as a spirit, 'cause they _really_ hate Nabs, and she's miserable about it._

Looking around for a distraction, the succubus puffed out a light sigh of relief at the sight of three girls she thought she recognized from class in a nearby vacant dirt lot carrying weird-shaped clubs and surrounding another girl. The stranger's smoothly muscled body was enclosed in the faint image of an unfamiliar school uniform and her hair was tied up in an oddly off-center ponytail. "Akane, eyes right," Ranma murmured.

As Akane turned to look, the three Furinkan girls charged toward the stranger, shrieking their anger. Even as they ran forward, clubs upraised and thrown, the stranger stepped back and raised a hand, and Ranma's eyes widened as the entire length of the ribbon she sent spinning toward her attackers glowed with ki. The strength of the glow failed to match that of Kuno's bokken or Ryoga's bandanas, but it strengthened the swirling fabric enough that airborne clubs were knocked aside. Tthe attackers screamed in pain as it slammed across them and knocked them to the ground.

"If I may restate it ... !" the stranger shouted, her ribbon spinning around her, " ... perhaps _this_ ... or _this_ ... or _this_ will be clearer!" With each shout, the ribbon slashed out at her defeated attackers, smashing them shrieking back into the dirt — until with a loud SNAP Ranma caught the ribbon with one hand, flying backwards to pull its wielder stumbling forward. The girl recovered and moved back, eyes widening as her weapon's length pulled taut, running suspended in the air from her hand to wrap around apparently empty space.

"Don't ya think that's enough?" the now hovering invisible succubus asked. "I mean, you've already won, right?"

"What kind of magic _is_ this?" the stranger gasped, and the ribbon's glow began to fade as she lost her concentration in her shock.

Behind Ranma, Akane helped their schoolmates to their feet. Ranma ignored the murmurs behind her as her future sister-in-law ushered the three girls back away from the confrontation, focused on the stranger staring at the space occupied by her ribbon-wrapped hand. 'Ranko' and 'fight' were the only words she understood. Then the ki completely faded from the fabric, and it dropped through her fist to the ground. "No magic," Ranma replied with an invisible shrug, "just Ranko, a local spirit that don't much care fer people that keep up the beatin' after they've won."

"Not even a spirit may interfere in the affairs of a Kuno!" the stranger declaimed, and as she spoke she slipped a foot under the handle of one of her attackers' clubs. Kicking it up, she caught it and Ranma dropped straight down to bury herself waist-deep in the bare earth as wood suddenly shining with ki swept through the air where her shoulders had been a moment before.

Spinning to fly through the murky ground, looking up through the surface, the succubus passed beneath the girl (resolutely ignoring the view it gave her through see-through panties) to come up directly behind the stranger, clasped-together hands catching a heel and spilling the girl forward as Ranma headed skyward.

The girl reached forward as she fell, her dress flaring out around her as she turned her stumble into a handspring. She spun around as she landed on her feet, futilely searching for her invisible opponent. "I see I have some preparations to make before we meet again," she said. "Remember, I am Kuno Kodachi, the Black Rose of St. Bacchus's School for Girls!" And with that, she bound to the top of the fence at the side of the empty lot and away across the translucent roofs, wild laughter trailing behind.

From where she hovered scores of feet about the ground, Ranma watched Kodachi dwindle into the distance. "Great, another Kuno, as crazy as Tatewaki," she muttered.

Turning and looking down, the redhead found Kodachi's three attackers clustered about her student, tears rolling down their cheeks, wailing, "Akane, please, you have to help us!"

/\

"So you were _all_ ambushed? The entire rhythmic gymnastics martial arts team?" Akane asked from where she sat on her bed. Her eyes were locked on the bruises and bandages on the faces of the three girls kneeling on the bedroom floor on the other side of a tea tray set for four.

"Every one of us!" one of the girls agreed. "None of us will be able to compete now, we'll have to withdraw from the match!"

From where she was hovering above the bed beside her student Ranma had to agree, the succubus's eyes hard as she surveyed the multitude of cuts and what must be bone-deep bruises she could see through the faint images of their clothes, covering the girls' bodies.

"Akane, you must take our place, no one else at Furinkan can possibly keep that bitch from getting away with this!" another girl asserted, tears streaming down her face.

_Whoa, hold on a minute!_ Ranma glanced over at the youngest Tendo. As she'd feared, the girl's eyes had lit up at the request.

"Of course —" Akane started, before Ranma broke in.

"A' course you'll ask yer sensei about it first, right?"

Akane turned to look up at the spot where she sensed her teacher hovering, face darkening with anger, only to break off to take a deep breath. After all, Ranma was right — she had accepted him as her teacher, and she had to accept the limitations that went with it. And they had a cover story to maintain. "So why don't you switch so I can ask him?" she ground out.

Ranma nodded in spite of the fact that only Akane could 'see' it, and glanced down through the floor at the furo. The room on the floor below was empty. "No problem."

/\

"From Ranko's memories, ya want Akane ta take yer place at the next match, right?" Ranma asked from where he now sat on the bed beside Akane, dressed in a set of his preferred Chinese clothes that was kept in the room by the furo.

The girls nodded.

"So tell me just what this rhythmic gymnastics martial arts is all about."

One long explanation later, Ranma had to admit that the basic concept wasn't all that bad. Sure, the ball and hoop were pretty silly, but the clubs and ribbon were useful and the training and flexibility needed for the moves was top-notch. "An' when's the match?"

"Uh ..." The girls exchanged nervous glances. "Next Tuesday."

"Next Tuesday ... ya mean one week? You expect Akane ta learn a completely new style in _one week_?"

Ranma opened his mouth to reject the request outright, but paused at the pleading expressions on the faces of the three girls ... and his student. "Bring over the equipment an' some training manuals, an' I'll see what we can do," he finally agreed with a sigh. "If by next week I think Akane's got a shot at at least makin' a decent showing, we're in. But _only_ if, an' I wouldn't count on it."

But his last sentence was drowned out by happy squeals from the team, and his heart sank as the three girls jumped up to hug Akane, then rushed from the room to fetch the requested equipment and manuals. This was _not_ going to end well.

/oOo\

Standing by the dojo wall, Ranma took a deep breath. _Okay, let's see if I've figured this right._ He took several steps to build some momentum, tucked to roll — and the hoop in his hands caught on his heels, he landed flat on his back, and the hoop snapped between his hands.

He stared for a moment at the broken rhythmic gymnastics martial art accessory, then surged to his feet and hurled the hoop across the dojo. The hoop hit the wall a few yards from Akane and broke in half, making her flinch. Ranma noticed and took another deep breath and blew it out. "Okay, we're gonna hafta think a' somethin' else, this isn't working," he said with forced calm.

"I could have told you that," Akane said. "In fact, I did." She motioned to the stack of manuals on the floor by her feet. "What made you think you could learn it from pictures and descriptions in manuals, anyway?"

"Seein' Pop do it with scrolls he stole from places we stopped," Ranma snarled, then paused. "Ya know, I don't think I've mentioned those ta anyone. I'll hafta get 'em, get with Mom an' Nabiki an' see if we can figure out who they belong to an' give 'em back." He thought it over for a moment, then sighed and continued reluctantly, "Anyway, Pop has ta struggle, but he can do it. I figured the way I soak up techniques just by watchin' people do 'em, if Pop could do it, it'd be easy for me ta figure it out from the photos in the manual. Problem is, it isn't workin' — I need ta see the flow from beginning ta end instead a' just a few points."

Akane resisted the urge to twit Ranma over his admitting that there was something martial arts related that he couldn't do, at least not effortlessly. A side glance at the broken hoop and the way the ponytailed boy was beginning to pace made resisting temptation easy. Instead, she frowned thoughtfully. "The girls were too beat up to show you themselves, but what about video tapes?" she asked. "I'll bet they've taped a bunch of their matches. If they kept them, that would let you see the moves from beginning to end — and not just in practices, either."

Ranma broke off his angry stumping to turn and stare at his student. "They do that?"

"Yeah, haven't you ever been in a competition before?"

Ranma shook his head. "Nope, Pop said we shouldn't pick on civilians."

"More likely he didn't want to draw attention," Akane said, smirking. "They give out prizes, but you have to register."

"Yeah, you're right," Ranma agreed with a laugh. "The only thing that'd keep Pop from goin' fer easy money is gettin' the cops on his trail." Sobering, he continued, "An' yeah, videos'd be a big help. But that gets us ta the second problem, I'm a guy."

"I've noticed," Nabiki said.

The two turned to find Nabiki standing in the dojo doorway, a dusty Ryoga beside her carrying his umbrella and massive pack on his back. Instantly, they tensed up, looking for an opportunity to strike. "Let her go, Ryoga," Ranma growled. "You're fight's —"

"Whoa, easy!" Nabiki shouted, stepping in front of Ryoga and spreading her arms out. "I'm not a hostage, he isn't here to fight! I ran into him on the way home, and since he was heading here himself we came together."

Slowly, Ranma and Akane relaxed, and Akane shivered with the clash of conflicting emotions when she noticed the way her older sister seemed to ... relax, _soften_ ... as their tension eased and her eyes met her lover's. On the one hand, her sister was sharing a bed with a part-time _sex demon_! She knew it wasn't Ranma's fault, it was her nature now (when he was a 'she', anyway), but still ... On the other hand, Nabiki seemed a lot happier since before she'd first met 'Ranko', not to mention was a lot easier to live with, her biting wit easing off into a wry sense of humor, at least with her sisters — she was becoming someone Akane actually _liked_, not just tolerated because they were family. _If only magic wasn't part of the mix,_ the youngest Tendo thought with another shiver.

"You're a little late," Ranma commented.

"Yeah, since your ... since Mother has to move my training to the evenings so she can stay as long as she needs to at her business, after my meeting I decided to take some time to see if Gosunkugi had emptied out his little hidey hole yet, and make sure he hadn't left any traps behind — he seemed to be just the kind of vindictive asshole that would do that," Nabiki said nonchalantly.

"Did he?" Akane asked, intrigued against her will.

"Yes, and yes. Good thing I checked, too, the idiot didn't quite get the circles right, and he wouldn't have been the only one hit by the backlash. So I shielded and triggered them so he'd be the only one hit," Nabiki finished, smirking. "Nobody important gets hurt, and he gets another lesson in how incompetent he is."

"Nabiki, he may be incompetent, but —" Akane started, only to break off when she noticed Nabiki's eyes slide toward Ryoga. Right, keep it inside the family.

"Anyway, what's your problem with being male?" Nabiki hastily asked.

Akane and Ranma exchanged glances. "Well, on our way home ..." Ranma started.

A quick explanation later, and Nabiki was shaking her head. "Another Kuno, as nuts as the first, that's just ... wonderful," she muttered, rubbing her temples and thinking dark thoughts — she didn't want to try to kill the girl (or risk dying if it didn't work), but maybe if she got a hold of some of her hair ... "So what does that have to do with you being male?" she asked.

Ranma shrugged, and gestured toward the broken hoop. "First, I'm too big," he replied. "Second, guys aren't build the same way girls are, we don't walk the same way, bend the same way — I'm not sure I could curl up tight enough for some a' these stunts even if I was small enough. That's not a problem with Akane yet, 'cause we've been focusin' on her speed and gettin' her caught up on the basics, but this goes way beyond just speed."

"Got it, that makes sense," Nabiki mused. "But as stubborn as you are I doubt you're ready to give up, any ideas?"

"Well, actually ..." a little shamefaced, Ranma reached up to scratch under his ponytail. "I was thinkin' a' gettin' some help from the Amazons. I figure they have lots a' experience trainin' girls, an' Shampoo was using a couple a' clubs when she fought Ryoga."

"Not a bad idea," his lover complimented, "how did you intend to pay them?"

"Pay?"

Nabiki rolled her eyes, chuckling. "Of course it didn't occur to you, you'd do it for free just to see if you'd learn something in the process. Don't worry about it, if need be I'll pay for it — this is family, after all, and I have quite a bit salted away. Actually, I'll come with you. I wanted to visit the Amazons, anyway. So does the Lost Boy, here," she added, stepping to the side out of Ryoga's way.

Akane and Ranma focused on a suddenly blushing fanged boy, and Ranma grinned. "Decided ta take 'em up on their offer, did ya?"

"Yeah, I ... wait, you know about it?" Ryoga demanded, tensing up.

"Yeah, I followed ya after they beat ya down, heard the whole thing," Ranma tossed off, then glanced over at a Nabiki suddenly inching to the side, away from the boy behind her.

"How dare you spy on me!" Ryoga erupted, charging forward.

"Whoa, easy!" Ranma shouted, throwing himself to one side as Akane dove away in the opposite direction, rolling to her feet braced for action. Ranma backpedalled as Ryoga followed up, thrusting repeatedly with his umbrella. "Hold up, I just wanted ta make sure you were all right!" he insisted as he dropped below another thrust and tried to kick the umbrella out of Ryoga's hand even as Akane slammed into the Lost Boy from the side. The larger boy managed to hold onto his umbrella, but staggered to the side as Akane's strike combined with the weight of his backpack to pull him off-balance.

Nabiki took the opportunity to step between the combatants. "That's enough!" she shouted. Turning to Ryoga, she said, "Hibiki-san, if you're going to make things work with your wives, you have to stop attacking Ranma whenever he pisses you off — something I'll admit he seems to have a talent for," she added with a smirk over her shoulder at her lover.

"Yeah, right," Ranma growled, glowering at Ryoga, and Nabiki sobered as a wave of worried self-disgust from the ponytailed boy washed over her.

Ryoga glowered back, but reluctantly nodded. "Whatever," he replied, then paused. His eyes dropped, his cheeks again darkening red. "Uh, could you guys take me to the park?"

Ranma held the glower for a moment, but finally sighed. "Sure," he agreed. "When did ya last eat?"

"Uhhh ... I don't know," Ryoga admitted, then winced as his stomach growled.

"Right, I'm sure Kasumi'll be happy ta feed ya, nothin' makes her happy like someone enjoying her cooking. Just don't try ta leave the kitchen till we come for ya. Akane, ya want ta use the furo first? I'll be goin' in spirit form. I can clean up after we get back, then we can do our homework while Mom whales away on ... ah, trains Nabiki."

"Actually, Mother called me to say we won't be training tonight, something came up," Nabiki broke in to add, with a grimace of her own as she started toward the dojo entrance. "She said we'll have to make it up in the morning."

/\

A few minutes later, Nabiki looked around as she sensed her lover float into their room through the floor, up from the furo below. She smiled as her eyes roamed the length of the cute sex spirit on display. As she hoped, she felt her lover's mood lighten as the red-haired girl practically wriggled with pleasure at the wave of lust and love Nabiki sent her. Nabiki spread her arms. "Get over here," she said in a husky voice. Ranma eagerly floated over into the hug, her lips seeking her lover's as she settled into Nabiki's lap. After a long moment of luxuriating in the soft feel of skin against skin, Nabiki broke the kiss and sighed regretfully as Ranma's head dropped to rest on her shoulder. "Too bad we don't have time for a quickie," the middle Tendo murmured. "Besides, we don't want to disturb your mother."

"Mom? She's home? I thought ya said somethin' came up," Ranma murmured into the hollow of Nabiki's shoulder.

"It did. She's going to be out late, so she said she'd be coming home early to get in a nap, first. Oh, and she gotten everything turned in for changing your family names today."

"Oh." Ranma fell silent for a long moment, then sighed. "We might want ta cut back on the feeding, anyway ... Akane's complaining about the noise."

"Oh." Nabiki felt her cheeks heating. Hastily changing the subject, she asked, "Ranma, what was your problem with Ryoga, when I broke up the fight?"

"Caught that, did ya?" Ranma felt her lover's nod press into her hair. "I wasn't mad at Ryoga, he was just bein' stupid. I was mad at me."

"You?"

"Yeah ... he caught me by surprise. After havin' Pop jump me whenever I get careless fer years, after gettin' ta the point that he almost never catches me off guard, and I'm surprised by a guy standin' right in front of me that I'm watchin'!" Nabiki felt the nature spirit's arms tighten around her. "It's this stupid body, I'm gettin' ta depend on its senses."

"Hey, there's nothing 'stupid' about that body! It's too cute for words," Nabiki asserted. She thought back to the night before and the mix of pleasure and love that had swept through her thanks to her lover's increasingly skilled fingers, and felt Ranma shiver as Nabiki's lust-filled love again washed through her. "And if you were normal, would you be able to feel that?" Ranma shook her head even as she relaxed. "And if you were normal, the first time we met would have been when your father brought you to the dojo. That ... would not have gone well." It was Nabiki's turn to shiver, as she thought of how her old bitter and sarcastic self would have reacted to being told that one of the sisters would have to marry an ignorant, egotistical boy whose only apparent redeeming feature was that he could beat people up — she'd probably have dumped him on Akane, and wouldn't _that_ have worked out wonderfully!

Ranma shivered again, and not pleasantly this time, at the feelings of guilt and self-disgust her lover was suddenly radiating. "You're right, I'm glad things worked out like they did," she hastily said. "I'll just hafta remember ta be extra careful when I go anywhere as a guy."

Nabiki took a deep breath and shook off the might-have-beens. "Right, you're Saotome Ranma, you never lose. You'll deal with it, right?"

"Right!"

_And I'll just have to put finding a way to enhance your senses while human at the top of my list, along with breaking the curse on big sis and the doc, finding a way to keep you from getting summoned whenever someone uses your name in the circle, strengthening the wards on everyone even further, surviving 'Mother's' evening training in kenjutsu, somehow getting everyone off my list of victims without incurring a karmic debt to the imps I used to collect the blackmail material, and figuring out what to do about a top-level demon trying to recruit me._

For a moment Nabiki quailed under the weight of her accumulated tasks and problems, only to yelp when Ranma reached right through her bra to tweak a nipple. "None a' that, not while _I'm_ around!" the nature spirit insisted, leaning back and grinning at the pageboy-haired girl.

Nabiki giggled. "Right, I have you on my side, how can I lose?"

"Damn straight!" Ranma agreed, floating up and away from her seat in her lover's lap to strike a noble, self-confident pose. The effect was more than a little spoiled by the nature spirit's tiny, cute, and especially naked appearance, and Nabiki's giggles turned into laughter even as she felt herself heating up again.

A knock sounded on the doorframe of the open door, and the two looked over at Akane, standing there smiling at the scene, what she could see and sense of it. Nabiki returned the smile as she realized that this time there was nothing mixed about the pleasure her younger sister was taking in their happiness. She doubted Akane's complete acceptance was permanent, but the girl was coming around.

"I'm ready," Akane said, shaking her head and giggling a little, herself. "Let's get Ryoga and get going, maybe we can be back in time for dinner. Unless you two are too busy?"

Nope, we're good!" Ranma said hastily.

Akane's giggle turned into a laugh. "Gotcha!" she called back over her shoulder as she turned to lead the way back to the stairs.

* * *

Besides the obvious play on Kodachi's self-assumed label, the story title comes from a ritualized but deadly serious form of battle practiced by the Aztec Alliance and some of its enemies.


	2. The Newest Amazon

I do not own anything written by Rumiko Takahashi or Kosuke Fujishima.

* * *

Ku Lon finished of the last of her meager supper, and gazed down into her empty bowl for a long moment before sighing and setting it to the side. It was a perfectly useable bowl, its only fault that it had become an empty one too quickly. The Amazons were on half-rations, and even then their supplies and the yen to buy more would be gone all too quickly.

"Supplies are getting low."

Ku Lon glanced up at the abrupt opening conversational gambit in the local Japanese, and nodded to her life-long rival balancing on her Elder's staff. "True," she agreed in the same language, motioning for Dao Paz to dismount and join her.

As Dao Paz dropped off her staff and joined her, Ku Lon considered the odd twists life could take. The two had been rivals for all their lives, and not friendly ones — while neither would have dreamed of putting the tribe at risk, likewise neither had hesitated to stick it to the other when the opportunity arose. As a result, she had _not_ been looking forward to spending long weeks in her rival's company, unable to put any real distance between them, and the inevitable rancor to come.

The actual outcome had been very different — the way they'd been forced to spend extended time in each other's company had forced them to seek common ground out of sheer self-defense, and they'd found it in their shared concern for the future of the tribe. After centuries of bitter sparring it was probably too late for them to become friends, but they weren't precisely enemies anymore, either.

Dao Paz waited for Ku Lon to continue, then chuckled when the silence lengthened. "So, have you been considering ways to deal with that?" she asked. "We cannot buy any more food, what money we have left will be needed to pay for our trip home. And the hunting in this area isn't exactly promising."

Ku Lon sighed, turning look out across the late afternoon park. "I have been seriously considering sending several of the warriors to the countryside — surely the masses of people swarming this island like bees in a hive haven't hunted out _all_ of the prey!"

"Hmm ... possible, that. Dangerous, though — in a land this crowded, any land empty enough to have prey large enough to be worth hunting that far away from here must be owned by _someone_. She is likely to object."

"True," Ku Lon again agreed with a shrug. "It would give our warriors an opportunity to practice their stealth." Holding up a hand to hold off her rival's rebuttal, she added, "But yes, the consequences of being caught, while likely not as serious as poaching on Musk land, would be bad enough. Do you have an alternative?"

"A partial one, at least," Dao Paz admitted. "I was thinking — and Lo Shun agrees — that since you no longer need our presence for judgment, and the Husband Hunt that the warriors came along for is complete, we should return to the village with all the warriors except for Xian Pu while you stay here with her and Pa Fum to await the Wanderer's decision. We can leave you the funds that would pay for your own trip home, that would feed you for some time if you are careful, and able to supplement it — that should be easier for three than seventeen, and easier for three to make their way back without funds later. In truth, I'm surprised even men have allowed a group of armed warriors even as small as ours to camp on their lands as long as we have without saying anything."

She paused for a moment, then reluctantly continued, "Ku Lon, I agree with you on the need to at least establish an outpost elsewhere, away from our village, but was doubtful that this island was the place to do it. Since our arrival, I have become even more so. How are we to live? There are no wide open areas available for farming that someone isn't already using, and you've already noted the problems with hunting. Then, even if you can find a place for us among these hordes of sheep, everything is simply so _expensive_! And even if you do manage to find some way to earn the money we'd need to support a sufficiently large outpost ... I know you were hoping for some alteration to our ways, but here our traditions wouldn't just be modified, they'd be plowed under. No, my old enemy, we are going to have to think of something else."

After a brief struggle with herself, Ku Lon nodded with a sigh — truth was truth, after all, however little she liked it. "At the moment, I have to agree, I see no path forward here, either. Still, with your suggestion I have more time to perhaps have something come up to open up that path. Remember the story Jason MacKenzie told us all those decades ago, about the horse learning to sing? It did then, to the music of high explosives. Perhaps it will, now."

Dao Paz, chuckled softly. "Perhaps, we shall see. And I will even do my best to resist the temptation to undercut your position on the Council while you search for that singing horse."

"Oh, _thank_ you! You are truly generous!" Ku Lon enthused.

Dao Paz's chuckling turned into laughter soon joined by Ku Lon's, only for the amusement to cut off at the approach of one of the warriors on guard duty. The young warrior stopped before the two elders and bowed in respect. "Honored Elders, the Wanderer, the younger two Tendo sisters, and they tell me the sex spirit wish admittance to the camp."

Ku Lon nodded to the guard. "Of course, Lu Lu, inform Lo Shun, find the Wanderer's wives and ask them to join us here, then bring in the visitors."

The warrior bowed again and left, and the two elders exchanged glances. "Well, that was quick," Dao Paz murmured. "Perhaps you will be returning with us, after all."

"We'll see," Ku Lon replied, as she caught sight of Xian Pu and Pa Fum approaching. "But unlikely — of the four Wanderers to encounter the tribe after the first, three accepted, after all. And the one that refused was already married. But we will know soon enough."

/\

Akane, arms full with manuals, ribbons and clubs the Rhythmic Gymnastics team had loaned them, glanced around curiously as she and Nabiki followed one of the warrior women that had intercepted them when they'd approached the Amazon camp, Ryoga behind them with his packpack and the sense of presence that was Ranma floating along above and slightly to the side of the succubus's fiancée. The raven-haired Tendo had been appalled when she was told about the Kisses, though more for the sake of the women forced to marry possible rapists than the men — what man wouldn't be happy to wed and bed one of the magnificent specimens of womanhood she could see around her in the late afternoon sunlight? But for women forced into the beds of strange men ... she shivered at the thought. Why a society dedicated to female supremacy would come up with such repressive rules completely escaped her.

_Though it isn't like they're alone in that, is it?_ she thought, remembering the pact her father had entered into with Ranma's father. She _knew_ her father loved all his daughters, yet he had been perfectly willing to force one of them into an arranged marriage with a ... okay, Ranma wasn't a pervert, but his curse forced him ... her ... to _act_ like she was. Akane understood that it wasn't the same thing, but she still had trouble _believing_ it. Only the night Ranma had spent in her dreams showing her the vision the succubus had seen the night she was introduced to the Voice made that possible at all, and Akane glanced at Nabiki and shuddered as she thought of how things would have gone without the cursed boy and Nabiki meeting first. _She_ was the logical one of the sisters to fulfill the pact, after all — and become the focus of the part-time succubus's needs. As much as she loved Nabiki, what her older sister was doing with her fiancé simply wasn't _normal_ — for a human, at least.

Nabiki glanced at her, and Akane blushed, fighting not to glance up and back at the empty air where Ranma floated, as she remembered that both her sister and Ranma would be sensing her sudden disgust. But her sister simply raised an eyebrow and turned her attention back to the Amazons they were approaching. An Akane eager for a distraction from the path her thoughts had taken hastily followed suit.

The Nerimans' guide led them up to the same three shrunken gnomes of ancient women she had seen at the tail end of Ranma's and Ryoga's fight at the school, sitting in a row with their staves lying on the grass beside them, with two girls sitting slightly off to one side — the girl that had been injured when she interrupted that fight, and the one that had examined her. _They must be Ryoga's new wives,_ Akane thought, glancing at the Lost Boy out of the corner of her eye as he came up beside her. From the way he was stealing glances at the two girls and blushing, it was a safe guess.

"Please, sit," one of the crones said, the one that had taken the lead at the school. She waved at the grass in front of her. "Except for Ranma, of course," she added, looking at the empty air where Ranma's presence hovered, "but I suppose you can float on top of the grass." Akane sat and laid down her armful on the grass in front of her, Nabiki and Ryoga on each side of her, Ranma's presence settling down on the other side of her fiancée. The crone went on to reintroduce herself and introduce her fellow crones and Ryoga's new wives, Nabiki reciprocating. (_Am I hearing those right? Cologne, Lotion, Daipers, Shampoo, Perfume? What kind of names are those?_)

Introductions made, Ku Lon went on to offer them refreshments (which they declined, with the excuse they'd just eaten), asked about things that had struck her during her time in Japan (both currently and during an earlier trip), made comparisons to her tribe in China, and more small talk until Akane was about ready to burst with pent-up impatience — until she caught the elder's brief sly glance toward the two Amazon teenagers. Pa Fum was calm enough to do Kasumi proud, eyes shyly downcast, but her companion was all but dancing where she sat, apparently held in place only by Pa Fum's hand resting on one shoulder.

Finally, with a sly glance of her own at the twitchy teenager, Nabiki said, "This is interesting, but perhaps we should move on to business? It is getting a little late, and if we delay much longer Shampoo may explode."

"Perhaps you are right, child," Ku Lon blandly replied, "though my great-granddaughter has need of practice in the patience befitting an elder." Xian Pu stiffened, eyes widening, and Ku Lon nodded to her. "Your patience so far has been exemplary ... for one of your age and temperament. You will learn better in time."

"Yes, Honored Elder," Xian Pu replied, an undeniable edge to her polite words.

A faint snort of amusement came from her co-wife beside her, and a chuckling Ku Lon turned to Ryoga. "In truth, Wanderer, we did not expect a response this quickly. But you have come to a decision?"

Ryoga nodded jerkily. "Y-Yes-s, Elder Cologne, I have. I a-accept," he stammered.

Ku Lon bowed to the now blushing boy where he sat and motioned toward the two Amazonian teenagers. "Very well, son-in-law, you are very welcome to the tribe. Please, take your place with your wives."

Blushing furiously, Ryoga easily rose from his seat beside Akane, seemingly unaffected by his massive backpack, and the two co-wives made room as he sat stiffly between them.

As he settled, Ku Lon said, "While by our laws you are already married, we could hold your own marriage ceremonies if you wish ... ?"

Ryoga shook his head, and Akane could almost see his mood darkening, a faint greenish glow of ki that only top-ranked martial artists could see springing up around him. (_Admittedly,_ Akane thought to herself, _that probably includes everyone here except Nabiki and maybe ... Perfume, was it?_) "No," Ryoga managed to get out, "it would be for my parents, and who knows where they are? Your word's good enough."

"Very well," Ku Lon acknowledged, as the older co-wife reached up to lay a gentle hand on her husband's shoulder, her face sympathetic. He twitched at the contact, but took a deep breath and managed a weak smile in return, his sickly green aura dimming slightly.

Ku Lon watched the exchange with a small smile, then turned to the Tendo sisters and their succubus in-law, glancing at the pile of weapons and books in front of Akane. "I am grateful that you brought us our Wanderer," she said, "but I doubt you thought all three of you were needed. Is there something we can do for you in return?"

"Yes, there is," Akane heard Ranma say from the other side of Nabiki, and the succubus quickly explained about the upcoming competition and the need for training.

Ku Lon listened, examined the clubs and ribbon, then picked up a manual. As she looked through the pictures of the various techniques, Nabiki hesitantly said, "Please don't take offense, but we understand that training outsiders isn't something you would typically do. We can pay —"

But Ku Lon was shaking her head. "I am not offended, child. As you say we would not ordinarily train those not members of the tribe, and right now the yen would be welcome. But from what I can tell, none of this is close enough to anything the Amazons practice — not even the clubs, they are much lighter than what we typically use, as much for throwing as hand to hand. And these ribbons here and the hoops in these pictures —"

"I can train her." Everyone turned to stare at Ryoga. All trace of the earlier greenish aura was gone, the teenager sitting straight. "My family style has a strong weapons component. That's why Ranma always won out in our competition for the bread," he added, glaring at the empty space where the nature spirit's voice had come from. "The principal wouldn't let me carry my weapons while at school — not even my bandanas." Rising, he strode over to pick up one of the ribbons from in front of Akane, then walked away from the gathering to a spot behind and to the side of Akane, Nabiki and Ranma where all could see him. As Akane turned around where she sat, he held the short stick the ribbon was attached to against his chest, the ribbon itself stretched taut from the stick's tip to run between the middle fingers of an outthrust hand. He held the pose for a long moment, until between one breath and the next he was abruptly in motion, the ribbon spiraling outward, ki-drenched from stick to tip for all but Nabiki to see.

"Whoa!" Akane breathed.

"Ya got that right!" came Ranma's voice.

Nabiki simply nodded, wide-eyed.

Ryoga turned to look at Nabiki. "I believe you said something about a fee?" he asked with a smirk.


	3. Fighting in All Fairness

I do not own anything written by Rumiko Takahashi or Kosuke Fujishima.

* * *

Akane sighed as she dropped the manuals, clubs and ribbons on the floor of the dojo and turned to shuffle toward the door before forcing herself to stop — if she left everything in a pile there, Ranma was going to beat her around the head and shoulders the next time they sparred. Of course, with her training with Ryoga that would be at least until after the match in a week, maybe by then Ranma would have forgotten? _And do you really want to count on that?_

With another sigh, she turned back and bent over, aching muscles protesting as she slowly sorted out the various weapons and neatly placed them along the wall before picking up the books — Ryoga had pushed her _really_ hard in their impromptu training session. Not exactly how she had planned to spend the late afternoon and early evening, but with only a week they had to get in all the training she could. That didn't change the fact that she still had homework, though.

Shuffling back toward the house, she caught the scent of Kasumi's cooking and changed direction toward the kitchen entrance. Kasumi looked up from the stove as she came through the door before turning her attention back to her cooking. "Oh, Akane, you're back. Are the others with you?"

"No, not yet," Akane replied. "When we finished my training for the evening, Ranma and Nabiki stayed behind to ..." _To discuss how the Amazons could help break the curse on you and Dr. Tofu._ " ... to discuss some magic stuff." She shrugged with forced nonchalance — as shocked as she'd been when she found out that Dr. Tofu had been cursed, and furious that her saintly mother figure of an older sister had been caught up in it, it was still magic, and it still made her queasy just thinking about it. Besides, she wasn't sure just how much Kasumi knew. "Nothing to do with me, so I didn't wait."

Kasumi glanced up at her youngest sister at the hesitation in her reply, but turned back to her cooking without commenting on it. "I see. In that case you can join me for dinner after you clean up. I'll put Nabiki's and Ranma's dinner aside for them to reheat when they get home."

"Father, Auntie Nodoka and Saotome-san are out?"

"Yes, Father had a Council meeting, and Auntie got up from her nap and left not long after you three and Ryoga. She said not to wait up, she would be very late. I believe Saotome-san left about the same time, I haven't seen him since," Kasumi replied as she lifted a small pot off the stove's burner. "Now hurry up, before dinner gets cold."

"Yes, Mother," Akane said with a teasing grin as she turned for the door, and Kasumi smiled happily.

/oOo\

Ranma floated alongside Nabiki as the two made their way home from the Amazons' camp through Nerima's nighttime streets. It had been a productive meeting, at least according to Nabiki — Ranma had been quickly lost in Ku Lon and Nabiki's freewheeling discussion about their respective methods of breaking curses and how they could be integrated into a single ritual. It had apparently gone over Xian Pu and Pa Fum's heads as well, and the two girls had excused themselves to 'get to know their husband better', a comment that, along with the accompanying emotions, had had Nabiki smirking and Ranma blushing even as she chuckled (not giggled!) at Ryoga's sudden panic.

"So I figured if ya give the people you've been blackmailin' a chance ta help find where the scrolls go that Pop stole an' I can't figure out from where," the succubus said, "any that actually find one can get off yer books without that whatchacallit debt ta the imps kickin' in."

Nabiki nodded, turning her head to look at her lover (and taking the opportunity to discreetly check that the imp shadowing them was too far back to overhear their conversation). "Karmic debt, and that's not a bad idea. Just be careful that you don't include anything possibly dangerous in what we pass on to them for identification."

"Right, ya got it," Ranma agreed.

The two fell silent, simply enjoying each other's presence — and each other's enjoyment of that presence — for several minutes before Nabiki sighed. "So, just how well did Akane really do, tonight?" she asked.

Ranma hesitated. "She did ... she did good," she replied. "She really put a lot of effort inta it, worked hard."

"But not good enough, is it?" Nabiki pressed, noting the succubus's uncertainty. "Not when the competition is in just one week."

Ranma squirmed where she floated along, then slumped with a sigh, uncertainty shifting to dejection. "Probably not," she reluctantly agreed. "Like I said, she's really tryin' hard, an' Royga's actually not too bad a sensei. If it was a stand-up fight instead a' this game Kodachi wouldn't stand a chance — maybe if Akane dropped school fer the week ..."

Her voice trailed off as Nabiki shook her head. "Not happening," the middle Tendo said, "even if she was willing, Kasumi would never allow it."

"Yeah," Ranma agreed unhappily. "An' as much as you're insistin' I study, ya girls probably aren't wrong. It's just ... I really hate ta lose. I wish there was some way I could do the trainin', an' pass it on ta Akane."

"So do I," Nabiki agreed, then stiffened as a thought struck her, stumbling when she missed a step.

Ranma caught her elbow, and found herself getting flung around as Nabiki struggled for balance. By the time the pageboy-haired girl had managed that, her balance was almost as threatened by her laughter at the way the chagrin her fiancé was now radiating matched the look on her face. "Yeah, laugh it up," the redhead grumbled, "I'll figure it out sooner or later. What happened, ya okay?"

"I'm fine, just had a thought," Nabiki replied, then glanced around and lowered her voice, just in case their shadow had sped up to close the distance when they stepped out of sight. "But it would need Akane's cooperation to work, and since it involves magic —"

The two had passed through the front gates of the dojo, and Ranma glanced through the translucent house — there was Kasumi, cleaning up in the family room, Akane up in her bedroom, and — "Kodachi, she's here!" Instantly, the succubus's wings flashed out from her back, and she vanished through the door into the house.

Nabiki gaped in shock for a moment before Ranma's words fully registered, then she was charging for the door herself.

/\

_A few minutes earlier:_

Akane was feeling much better when she walked into her bedroom, dressed in her pajamas — nothing like one of Kasumi's dinners and a long soak in the furo for sore muscles afterward to brighten one's outlook. Not even the homework waiting for her in the bookbag by her bed could dampen her mood. The cool breeze from the open window felt good on her furo-heated body, even through her nightwear. _Wait, I didn't open the window —_

The only warning she had was the creak of a loose floorboard behind her, but it was enough. She dove forward as the sound of something smashing into the floor resounded behind her, landed on her bed, and spun around as she rose to a crouch to find the girl that 'Ranko' had briefly tangled with that afternoon standing behind her bedroom door. She was dressed in a purple leotard and sash and wearing a jeweled amulet, the head of a sledgehammer embedded in the floor in front of her.

"My floor! Do you know how much it's going to cost to _fix_ that?!" Akane screamed at Kodachi.

The raven-haired girl tossed her off-center ponytail back over shoulder as she shrugged dismissively. "Such sordid concerns are a matter for peasants such as yourself, not a Kuno. Now, let us compete in all fairness!" Yanking the sledgehammer up from the hole it had made, she charged forward and swung sideways for Akane's stomach.

Akane dove up over the swing, hands bracing on top of the gymnast's head, and flipped up and over her. She twisted as she flew to land by the door facing into the room, even as her use of her opponent as a brace sent Kodachi sprawling across the bed.

"You call ambushing your opponents 'competing in all fairness'?" Akane demanded.

" 'Ambush', such a nasty way to put it," Kodachi replied, rolling off the bed and back to her feet, hefting the sledgehammer. "I simply believe in 'fighting in all fairness' _before_ the match."

She lifted the sledgehammer above her head as she again charged forward.

Akane tilted to the side as she side kicked up, her foot slamming into the gymnast's wrists above Kodachi's head and knocking the sledgehammer out of her hands to sail back through the open window.

Kodachi stumbled at the abrupt shift in her center of balance and slammed into the wall beside the door. Turning to face her opponent, she dropped, then bounced off the wall again before tumbling to the side as Akane's reverse roundhouse kick clipped the top of her head.

Akane's heel imbedded itself in the wall, and she hopped for balance as she yanked her foot out of the new hole before turning to find Kodachi perched on her bed. "Yeah, right, 'all fairness'," she mocked. "You're as crazy as your brother."

Kodachi stiffened, fists clenching. "Do not _ever_ compare me to that deluded buffoon!" she snarled. She crouched, ready to leap at Akane, then paused to reconsider as she observed the other girl's defensive stance. "The rumors are true, you _are_ good, aren't you?" she mused as she slipped her ribbon out of her sash. "So, I will take my leave, until we meet again, Tendo Akane! Ohohohohohohoho!"

The ribbon swirled out, and with it an explosion of rose petals filled the room, obscuring Akane's vision. "What?! Get back here!" she shouted as she charged into the settling cloud of petals, then "umphed" as her legs caught on her bed and she barely kept herself from splitting her chin open on the windowsill. Pulling herself up, she looked out the window Kodachi had to have jumped out of and down into the yard.

/\

Kodachi laughed as she dove out the Tendo peasant's window, spinning to get her feet underneath her. (Laughed, not cackled. Cackling was a completely different sound, a barbaric hacking of the lowborn — even if it served the same purpose as her own refined, spine-tingling, knees-loosening laughter.) So her little visit hadn't gone as intended, it was but a minor setback. There would be many opportunities to again seek out Akane over the next week, to once again prove the superiority of the Kuno over the common herd. Nor would that lowborn peasant find it so easy next time to hold Kodachi off from her rightful course!

Then the ground was rushing up to meet her, she braced herself for the impact — and unseen hands grabbed her shoulders and _yanked_, she spun in the air, and all the air left her lungs as she slammed back first onto the lawn.

Even with the grass to soften the blow her sight was spangled from her head's impact, and she fought to suck air back into her temporarily paralyzed chest. _Finally_ she managed to unlock her chest muscles and suck in the fragrant nighttime air, just as she felt someone settle on top of her, straddling her stomach — but there was no one there! Why wasn't her talisman _showing_ her anything?! "Akane, you okay?" the same voice she had encountered earlier that afternoon called up to the window she had just leaped out of.

"I'm fine, take out the garbage!" the Tendo commoner called down.

"You got it!" Ranko's voice shouted back, and a still-woozy Kodachi began to shake as she felt the apparently ample breasts of the spirit press against her own, flesh against flesh right through her leotard even as Akane's voice echoed down to them again: "Hey, who's going to clean up this mess?!" Unseen hair brushed across Kodachi's face, and Ranko's voice murmured in her ear: "Listen close, you're gonna want ta get this right the first time. I'm gonna be hauntin' Akane every minute of every day before yer match, and if I see ya anywhere close ta her before then you'll hafta forfeit, 'cause you're gonna be in the hospital."

Then the pressure of the spirit's flesh against her own vanished from on top of her, hands pushed under her shoulders to pick her up, she was lifting up into the air, over the dojo compound's wall ... and just as suddenly she was in freefall again, barely managing to curl into a roll, feeling the rough surface of the road digging into her shoulders and back and scraping her knees. "An' don't come back!" Ranko called out from somewhere above her.

Kodachi staggered to her feet and looked around wildly, and of course saw nothing beyond a normal nighttime Nerima street. Sucking in shuddering breath after shuddering breath, she clenched her fists. "How ... how dare they t-t-treat a Kuno in such a fashion," she murmured, determinedly ignoring the tremor in her voice. Still, perhaps it would be best to leave her opponent alone until the competition _just_ this once — a Kuno was supposed to be the ambusher, not the victim, after all, and it appeared the Tendo's spirit ally had the advantage. She would simply have to redouble her training and consider what kind of special tools to bring next Tuesday.

_But first, I need to have a ... discussion ... with the tradesman that sold me this amulet._

/oOo\

"Here you go." Nabiki handed her older sister her bag of rose petals, quickly followed by a still fuming Akane (except when her eyes crossed the hole in the wall she'd punched with her heel, when the anger coming off her in waves was tinged with a large dollop of guilt — Kasumi had visibly flinched when she'd seen it).

Kasumi smiled her thanks as she added them to her own bag. "Will you and Ranma be eating now? she asked.

"Give us a few minutes and we'll be down," Nabiki replied. Kasumi nodded and left to warm up the dinners.

Nabiki waited until she heard her sister's steps on the stairs, then turned back into the room to find Akane pulling text books from her school bag. "Hold up, Akane, there's something we need to talk about first," Nabiki said. Then, at Ranma's questioning look from where the redhead was floating by the window, she added, "The thought I had just before you saw Kodachi jumping out the window."

"Gotcha." Ranma looked back out over the yard, and Nabiki assumed the street beyond the compound wall, glanced around the room, ceiling and floor as well as the walls, and shrugged before floating away from the window into the center of the room. "Looks like that nutcase isn't comin' back, at least right now. I'll be goin' ta school as Ranko, though, just ta be sure. Whatcha got?"

Nabiki's eyebrows rose as she realized just what the determination Ranma had been emoting, the equal of Akane's fury, had been about. She glanced at her sister and quickly decided that mentioning that Ranma had been standing guard would _not_ be a good idea. Instead, she sat down in the chair at Akane's desk and motioned for her sister to sit on the bed. Akane and Ranma _really_ weren't going to like this, but perhaps they were angry enough to go along, anyway.

As soon as Nabiki was seated Ranma drifted over to settle in her lap, and her arms automatically circled the redhead's waist to gently hug her.

Akane plopped down on her bed and pulled her legs up to sit cross-legged. "Save it for your room, you two," she groused, rolling her eyes, "or better yet a love hotel — the soundproofing is better." But the emotion she was radiating was resigned affection, and Nabiki smiled softly at her — a smile she'd never show to anyone outside the family, and only recently to anyone inside it — as she reflected that, in spite of the headaches all the fear and hatred at school could give her, being an empath was a _good_ thing. From the feel of Ranma's chuckle against her chest, she suspected her fiancé agreed with her.

Akane stuck out her tongue, Nabiki assumed at Ranma even if the youngest Tendo couldn't see her exactly, then asked, "All right, big sis, what do you want to talk about? I _really_ have to get to my school work, and so should Ranma after _he_ eats."

_Right, to business._ Nabiki sighed and released Ranma to gently push the succubus off her lap. "You'll want to be able to see me for this," she told her. Ranma nodded and drifted to the other side of the room where she could see both Akane and her fiancée.

Once Ranma was settled, Nabiki turned back to her sister. "Tell me, Akane, just how badly do you want to beat the nutcase that just visited?" She smiled mirthlessly as Akane's good mood vanished in a wave of fury. "Don't bother answering, your emotions make that clear. But there's a problem — you aren't going to be able to learn enough in a week to pull it off."

"What!" Akane shouted, and this time her anger wasn't directed at their recent visitor. She turned toward where she sensed Ranma floating. "But ... but what about what you and Ryoga said tonight?!"

Ranma shifted uncomfortably. Reluctance clear in her tone, she said, "That was mostly Ryoga, but he was right, ya did good tonight. Ya really threw yerself into the training, ya listened, you're catchin' on good ... but not good enough — not ta face Kodachi in only a week. Especially since it isn't gonna be a straight-up fight — if it was, you'd mop the floor with her. And d'ya really think she isn't gonna cheat during the match as much as she is before? Sure, if I let ya compete you'll put up a good fight, but you'll still lose."

"And that will just feed that arrogant bitch's ego," Nabiki added.

Akane froze, mouth already open for her shouted rebuttal, then closed her mouth and shook her head. "So what do we do?" she asked, voice sullen. "We can't just forfeit, that's just as bad."

"We cheat," Nabiki said firmly, "and we do it right — so that no one knows we did it." Cutting off the gathering protest from both the martial artists, she quickly added, "If it makes the two of you uncomfortable, we can insist that Akane's name be left off of any awards and presentations. But this isn't about finding out who's best, it's about teaching that _Kuno_ a lesson."

The other two teenagers glanced toward each other, and finally nodded reluctantly. "Yeah, that'd probably be best," Ranma agreed. "So how do we do it? Ya said earlier it was magic?"

"Yes, it is," Nabiki agreed. "Remember how you said you wished there was some way you could do the training and pass it on to Akane? There is ... maybe. I'll have to do some quick research and talk it over with Mother, but offhand I can't see why it shouldn't work if Akane agrees to go along."

Leaning forward in her seat, she continued, "When I was doing my self-training in magic, I came across a ritual for making someone what the gaijin call a spirit warrior or champion. The person at the center of the ritual is offering to bind himself to a powerful spirit — the exact opposite of binding a familiar. Just what that means will vary from spirit to spirit; some will insist on codes of conduct, maybe give them missions, while others will give their champions pretty much a free rein. I didn't pay much attention to it at the time, because it isn't something our own spirits do much." _And I wasn't willing to give up that kind of control over me to anyone._

"But what's important here is what the _champions_ get out of it — they can summon their chosen spirit, for a kind of possession. A possessed champion is still in control, but he takes on some of the personality traits of his spirit, _and_ a measure of the spirit's skills — the level of skill determined by the skills of both the champion and the god, and the strength of the link."

Glancing over at Ranma, Nabiki grinned. "Mind, as wonderful as I think you are, you aren't _that_ powerful a spirit. I suspect that means you can help only one person you're linked to at a time, and when you do you'll actually be pulled into the body of whoever is calling on you. But you should be able to refuse any summons if you choose ... and we might be able to break the connection after the match."

She turned her attention back to her sister to find the raven-haired girl now had her knees pulled up against her chest, her arms wrapped around her legs, her anger from before now mixed with uncertainty and fear. Her eyes were shuttling back and forth between her sister and the to her apparently empty air where Ranma was floating. "Ranma-sensei, do you really think I can't learn enough in time?" she asked.

Unseen by her student, Ranma rubbed the back of her neck under her free-floating scarlet mane. "Well ... maybe ... probably. Nabs says she has ta research it, so it's not like we're gonna do it right away. Nabs, how long will ya take?"

It was Nabiki's turn to shrug, hiding a wince at the spike of anguished humiliation from her sister. "I'm not even sure it'll be possible. My book has the basic ritual with suggestions for how to fill in the blanks for various spirits — Western 'gods', mostly — but Mother and I'll need to see how you fit in."

"Okay, so why don't I train with Akane while you an' Mom do that, then when you get it figured out we'll see if Akane's doin' good enough ta go it alone," Ranma suggested. "But we'll need ta have at least a few days before the competition — that whole 'men don't move the same way as women' thing, even if we do end up shovin' me inta Akane and she gets some a' my skill, she'll need a few days ta adjust ta the difference."

Nabiki nodded thoughtfully, glancing sideways at her sister. She didn't know if Ranma had stumbled into it or done it deliberately, but Akane had relaxed her grip on her legs and the humiliation she'd been broadcasting had eased off at the suggestion that even with the merger, winning would depend on her own efforts. "That sounds reasonable," Nabiki agreed. "Though it will mean pushing back our first attempt to break the curse on Kasumi and Dr. Tofu another weekend. That might not be a bad idea, anyway, it'll give me and Mother more time to talk things over with the Amazons. Akane?" When her younger sister reluctantly nodded, she continued, "Now, Ranma, why don't you head down to the furo and meet me in the family room for dinner? I imagine Kasumi's waiting for us by now."

Ranma glanced down at ... and through ... the floor she could barely see and nodded. "Yeah, she is, see ya there." A moment later she was gone.

Nabiki rose to her feet and strode toward the door, only to pause for a long moment before turning back and plopping down on the bed beside Akane and pulling her into a brief hug. "You really surprised me tonight, little sis, that took real courage. Kasumi's going to be proud of you when she hears about it." With that, she rose and headed off to dinner, leaving her sister behind her slack-jawed with shock.


	4. The Night Shift

I do not own anything written by Rumiko Takahashi or Kosuke Fujishima.

* * *

Xian Pu stared down at her husband. The muscular teenager was flat on his back, a trickle of blood oozing from his nose.

Beside her, her co-wife sighed. "I think you got a little overeager," Pa Fum said, also looking down at the unconscious Ryoga. She glanced up at her Second Wife, blushed, and quickly looked back down.

Xian Pu looked down at her generous bare breasts framed by her open blouse, nipples crinkled tight with desire. Why was her First Wife embarrassed? There was no nudity taboo between warriors at the village, and they often bathed together after workouts so it wasn't like Pa Fum hadn't seen many a bare breast before — even a certain amount of caressing when a couple got too eager (usually just before the rest of the women in the tub would dunk the overly amorous pair and insist they find a room out of sight if not out of hearing). Xian Pu had actually shared a tub with Pa Fum a few times, and the apprentice healer had never shown the least hint of embarrassment ... or desire, come to think of it. So why now?

_{You know that as Second Wife you'll be expected to share my bed and ... and see to my needs?}_

Pa Fum's words from the night after Xian Pu's fight with Ryoga came to mind, and a grin spread across Xian Pu's face as she realized exactly 'why now' — her co-wife was actually thinking about her as a bedmate, and not just for sharing blankets like they had been doing since the night they'd agreed to share their Husband. She opened her mouth to suggest that the two carry on without him, only to pause as she remembered her great-grandmother's advice the next morning, on the need to nudge Pa Fum along, not _push_ — how they needed a strong, self-confident Pa Fum, a true First Wife, not a mouthpiece for whatever Xian Pu thought. How above all else, Xian Pu could not dominate her co-wife, in _anything_. No, she would just have to wait, even if the village Champion had gone from being able to have any unattached boy and many of the warriors in training she wanted (something she'd taken liberal advantage of) to famine, first alone then surrounded by couples, with a bashful First Wife and a Husband that couldn't even _look_ at her properly.

Xian Pu sighed and began doing up her blouse again. Like the stunt her great-grandmother had pulled on her that afternoon, it was one more lesson in patience that she clearly needed. {Perhaps,} she replied in their native tongue — with their Husband unconscious, there was no point sticking to a Japanese language that had to make her sound like an idiot. {But I just can't _believe_ our Husband is so ... so damaged. What if he is never capable of giving us children?}

{If time doesn't cure him, we will think of something else. And this will give us time to ... grow more accustomed to each other,} Pa Fum replied. To Xian Pu's surprise there was even a hint of firmness in the tone — though that might be because her co-wife was thinking of their Husband as a patient? She had no trouble being both firm and decisive where the wellbeing of her patients was concerned. Not that that was necessarily a good thing here...

Xian Pu grinned at a sudden thought. {It looks to be a clear night tonight, why don't we get our blankets and bed down right here? Maybe it'll help Husband grow more accustomed to us if he wakes up with a Wife on each arm.}

Pa Fum was blushing again, bright enough to be visible in the fading light, but she nodded her agreement. {We'll need a few more blankets, but it's a good idea. Let's do it.}

/oOo\

Still hidden behind by the Umisenken, Genma looked up at the apartment building his wife had just entered. While his cloaking technique hid him from sight and ki-sense (though as Ranma had reminded him a few nights ago, not from all senses), unlike his sometime-succubus 'daughter' it didn't allow him to pass through walls. Or doors, such as the one that had automatically locked before he had a chance to get through it behind his ex-wife. _Okay, you can do this,_ he thought. _You were able to sort out No-chan's — Tatsuno-san's ki-signature on the train while you were riding on the top, and there are a fewer people here._ There were more walls, though, and he'd tracked her on the crowded train by picking up her signature as she exited the car...

Shaking off his doubts, the sometime-panda circled the building, checking out the first floor apartments with lights on in the early evening dusk ... nothing. He leaped up a level, then across the tiny balconies each apartment on the upper levels had. Still nothing — at least, no Nodoka. There _were_ people home, and for long minutes he stared through a glass door at one young woman on her hands and knees, squealing in time to her swinging bare breasts and the wet slap of flesh on flesh as a sweat-coated man hammered into her from the rear. Finally, Genma forced himself to turn away and move on. _At least I _am_ moving on,_ he thought, forcing down a slight spurt of concerned shame. _I am _not_ like the Master — it isn't like I was looking through their door just to watch them, and _he_ would have been through the glass and all over her, everything else forgotten._ The balding martial artist ignored the passing thought that it _had_ been awhile since his last woman — since before leaving for China — and if it was a bad idea to try to pick up a one night stand at a bar in Nerima or use some of his earnings to find a prostitute, he could always watch. No one would even know he was there...

Half an hour later, on the third level, he found her (delayed a few minutes by another couple, teenagers that time). Gazing through the glass door leading from the apartment balcony into a bedroom, Genma frowned at the colored powders his former wife and a robed Shinto priest were laying out in a half-circle of lines and symbols he didn't recognize against a wall. What was No — Tatsuno-san up to?

/\

Nodoka stood and stretched. The summoning circle was finished — or in this case, the summoning _half_-circle. Normally, she wouldn't have dreamed of using such a set-up — a wall's significance as a boundary closed the connection, but would allow anything summoned able to pass through material objects or strong enough to make its own hole to use that wall for an escape route — but this time their target was _probably_ a departed spirit, and with a truly holy priest assisting her it should be safe enough. "That should do it. Kannushi-san, thanks again for allowing me this opportunity before cleansing the echo."

The Shinto priest also stood, bowing slightly to Nodoka. "It is my honor to help a Scout of your quality in her investigation, especially when it involves an apparent murder. And since the Sasakis don't know what is involved in an exorcism, I'll be able to pass off what little of the summoning circle we might miss cleaning up as part of the cleansing ritual when they return from their night at a love hotel. They'll never know you were here again."

Nodoka nodded agreement (forcing down an instinctive protest — it had only been a few years, she wasn't _that_ good), but grimaced. She _really_ hated sneaking around behind that sweet newlywed couple's backs, especially when it involved their home. If only her contacts inside the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department had been able to shed some light on the apparently murdered young woman she had seen, but they'd come up empty, not a hint in their records that anything had ever happened in the apartment...

She shook off her regrets. Solving a murder took precedence over a little invasion of privacy, especially when she was accompanied by someone — a priest, no less — that _did_ have permission to be there. Picking up her scabbarded katana from where it leaned against the bed they'd leaned up against the wall to make room, she slipped it through her sash, then loosened the blade for a quick-draw. She didn't expect trouble, but she hadn't lasted even the few years she had by depending on that particular expectation. And if the spirit _did_ turn out to be both hostile and powerful, the long hours she had spent enchanting her blade would go a long way to changing its mind. She'd learned _that_ lesson when the Scout that trained her had been eviscerated before her eyes by a departed spirit he summoned that turned out to be a revenant. If she had been actually participating in the ritual instead of observing far enough back that she _barely_ had time to draw her blade, she would have been next. "Let's get started."

The priest nodded and stepped to his place. "I have to say that I've never heard of anyone using an echo in a ritual as one would a photograph or drawing," he said.

"I can't entirely take the credit," Nodoka replied as she found her own place, then spread her hands. "I have a new apprentice that was self-taught for a number of years before she found me. While a certain amount of retraining has been necessary, she's also had some questions and innovations that I'd never considered. It has had me rethinking much of our traditional ways."

She watched the echo of the young woman sitting with her baby girl until the woman's head snapped back as if shot, took a deep breath and started chanting as her tension grew (in Japanese, though she was considering learning the Esperanto her apprentice used for the more uncertain rituals — not that it would have been usable with another participant that didn't know the language).

The priest joined in precisely on cue, and the two slowly lifted their arms, the chant growing louder even as the echo cycled several times through their crescendo until just as the echo's head snapped back yet again they snapped their hands in front of their chest in loud claps as Nodoka shouted, "Come!"

The echo silently vanished, to be replaced by the translucent image of the same young woman, standing where the echo had been. The spirit's head whipped around wildly as she took in her surroundings. "What ... ! ? Where ... ! ?" she stuttered out.

Nodoka sighed, both relief and regret. The spirit _was_ just a spirit, so she and the priest were safe enough, but the woman that had made the echo really was dead — Nodoka had never heard of an echo of anyone that wasn't dead, but one of the things she had remembered in her Nabiki-inspired reassessment was that not all the events echoes reenacted involved death. One echo she knew of was a castle haunted by a pair of little girls playing together, and they had died centuries earlier in a plague; they were actually quite the tourist attraction, the castle drawing visitors from all over the world hoping for a glimpse of the laughing pair. She'd been hoping... _We really need to learn more about just how echoes are created._

Shaking off her momentary introspection, Nodoka bowed low to the confused spirit. "Please forgive us for disturbing your rest, but we have questions that need answering involving your death."

"My ... oh." The spirit looked around again, more calmly this time, and seemed to shrink in on herself. "This was my bedroom. But it looks so different now, how long has it been since my murder?"

Nodoka winced, another hope dashed — it actually had been a murder. It hadn't seemed likely to be anything else, from what the echo had been acting out, but appearances could be deceiving. _Not this time, apparently._

"That is one of the things we need to determine," the priest replied. "We have been unable to determine even who you are or when you lived here."

The spirit seemed to shrink even more, her eyes falling. "My name is Mori Noriko and I lived here from 1994 to 1996." Her voice falling to almost a whisper, she added, "You don't know anything about little Kaede either, do you?"

"Your baby?" Noriko jerked a nod, and the priest sighed. "No, Mori-san, we don't."

"Finding out what happened to your daughter is one of the things I need to do," Nodoka added. When Noriko looked up, she continued, "I am Tatsuno Nodoka. Please, anything you can tell us about what happened will help."

"O-Okay," Noriko said, "but Kaede is my son, not my daughter. It started shortly after I moved to Tokyo. I met Saitou-san in a bar my office's secretarial pool used. He was a little old for my tastes, but he was handsome, dashing, educated, we were drinking — we ended up spending the night at a love hotel. The next morning he was as kind and attentive as he'd been the night before, and when he asked if he could see me again I was happy to say yes.

"The next few months were magical — intimate restaurant conversations, walks in parks, the cherry blossom festival... I knew that it wouldn't last, that he was married, but I didn't care — I was enjoying living every woman's romantic dreams too much to worry about the future."

She paused to wipe at spectral tears, then took a deep breath and continued, her eyes falling. "I first started sensing that something was wrong when I became pregnant. He actually figured it out before I did, and when it was confirmed he practically begged me to have the baby, offered to adopt the child, or to pay for its upkeep if I chose to keep it myself. I wasn't sure, but he was so ... so _understanding_ about everything, so _happy_...

"Things started getting weird when he simply assumed the baby was a boy. He never even asked about determining the sex, and when I suggested that I wanted to wait, for it to be a surprise he just shrugged. After that I realized that he'd never actually told me how he earned his living, and from the occasional slip I suspected that he had plans for our baby. I started to get worried. I was _glad_ when Kaede decided to come while Saitou-san was out of town, on a business trip he said.

"I was back home in the apartment he'd found for me — closer to his home, he said — when he next visited. I'd decided to pretend that Kaede was a girl instead of a boy, it wasn't like Saitou-san was going to change any diapers, but as soon as he walked through the door he pulled out a gun and ... and ..." She broke off and dropped to her knees within the half-circle, arms wrapped around herself.

"I'm sorry," Nodoka said softly after a long moment, politely averting her eyes from the translucent young woman and wishing now that she'd brought her son along as she'd considered — _Ranma_, at least, might have been able to touch ... comfort ... the grieving spirit. "I swear, I will do everything in my power to find your son. But I need to know more. What did Saitou-san look like? What was his full name? At what times was he able to visit you? Were there any odd days in particular he would show up, or couldn't? What were his favorite foods? Anything you can tell me."

After a few minutes Noriko slowly stood up again, wiping at her face. "Well, his hair was dark brown and beginning to gray, he had a scar ..."

/\

Still wrapped in the Umisenken's protective cloak, Genma silently stepped away from the glass door, then easily leapt across the slight gap between the apartment's balcony and the one next door over before dropping to the street three floors down, so caught up in what he'd seen and heard that he didn't even think to consider seeing if either couple were still going at it. It looked like Nodoka's interrogation was going to take awhile, and he needed to think.

Nodoka was not the romantic, naïve (and possibly oversexed) girl he had left behind when he had taken Ranma off on the training journey, he had realized that the moment he first saw her toned body and air of confidence in the Tendo family room. But this ... not only was his ex-wife dealing with forces he'd never imagined before his son's curse, but with murder and kidnapping.

And where did a balding martial artist of great skill but limited utility fit into that?


	5. Opening Investigations

I do not own anything written by Rumiko Takahashi or Kosuke Fujishima.

* * *

Nabiki tried not to groan as she dragged herself through the Furinkan High gates. She had thought that with her new sensei in the mystic arts taking the previous afternoon off from her training, that meant actually _skipping_ a day. Silly her — Mother Nodoka's early morning wakeup call for a make-up session of exercises and kenjutsu training had been an unpleasant surprise, and the workout had lasted long enough that Ranma hadn't had time for a proper massage before they'd needed to get ready for school while thoroughly killing her appetite (though Kasumi had packed her an extra-large bento). The only reason she was awake at all was the she was practically sloshing with coffee but that wasn't going to last the morning, much less the full school day, and the couple of thermoses full of the same she had with her would only help a little.

And when she got home that afternoon she had _another_ training session with her own personal Torquemada to look forward to. Yay her. _And here I thought training in the mystic arts meant _book_ learning, I really need to find out more about just what a Scout does..._

Floating between Nabiki and Akane, her nature spirit fiancé was almost chortling, amusement coming off her in waves even as her eyes continually swept around in a constant search for the crazy Kuno that had attacked Akane the previous evening.

"You're not exactly being sympathetic," Nabiki growled. "I thought fiancés were supposed to support each other!"

Now Ranma _was_ chortling, the ungrateful little wretch! Along with Nabiki's equally wretched little sister. Voice strained by the effort to keep it level, the flame-haired succubus replied, "It's somethin' all martial artists hafta go through sometimes. You'll be better for it." As the giggling Akane nodded her agreement, Ranma continued, "When me an' Akane get home from trainin' with Ryoga, I'll give ya another massage an' we can soak in the furo before bedtime. Besides, ya got the school day ta try an' come up with somethin' ta distract Mom, make the trainin' less hard." At Nabiki's unconvinced scowl, the succubus added, "Hey, it worked sometimes with Pop — though that was usually giving him a chance ta stuff his face. I don't think that'll work with Mom."

"No, from her figure I'd say food is not an overwhelming temptation for her," Nabiki replied. _On the other hand, she _has_ been impressed with some of my speculations._ Nabiki's mind flashed back to the idea she'd presented to Ranma and Akane the previous evening. Maybe if she sketched out some Circles from what she could remember about sealing a Champion to a supernatural patron, tried to modify them for nature spirits, showed them to her sensei when Mother Nodoka got home from work? It _was_ something she needed to do anyway and they had a serious time constraint, no reason not to kill two birds with one stone...

/\

Hours later, as she paused from scribbling down more notes around yet another intricately sketched out Circle to gulp down some lukewarm coffee (she'd stared down the one teacher to object to her in-class extracurricular activities), Nabiki reflected that it was a good thing for once that Ranma wasn't sharing her classes — after the example she was setting, all moral authority she had in their ongoing struggle over paying attention in school would have collapsed. And the usual atmosphere of angry, resentful fear and hatred she'd been living in at school since her empathic abilities had manifested had been transmuted into bemused curiosity — she didn't even have a headache.

/oOo\

Inspector Yosida Kenji smiled as he watched the waitress escort Nodoka to his lunchtime table. She was handsome in her business attire, her natural beauty actually toned down a little, and he thanked whomever or whatever had blessed him with the luck to be the investigator to first interview her about her husband's whereabouts and activities years before. He hadn't learned anything useful at the time, but it meant that when a half-trained Scout who'd found herself suddenly on her own after she lost her sensei to a ritual gone wrong had needed a police contact, his name had been the one to come to mind. Over the years since then they'd worked together on a few cases, some hers, some his. He wondered which it would be this time.

He rose to bow politely when she arrived, Nodoka sat down and laid a folder on the table to the side, then ordered her usual Pocari Sweat (she'd told him once that she'd acquired a taste for the sports drink when she'd taken up kenjutsu), and they made small talk as they waited for their meals. He was happy to hear that her son had turned out nothing like his father, and had accepted his mother into his life like they'd never been apart, even to the point that she'd moved in with his fiancée's family. Kenji remembered the first time he and Nodoka had shared a bed, the night after her divorce was finalized — and how afterward he had held her sweat-slick, naked body as she had sobbed out her grief. As he listened now to the wondering joy in her voice as she spoke of getting to know the magnificent, honorable young man her son had become and his _extremely_ clever fiancée, he found it impossible to keep a smile off his face.

But then their meals arrived, and he sighed — fun time was over, for now. As soon as they'd separated their chopsticks and the waitress had left, he quietly asked, "So, yours or mine?"

Nodoka frowned thoughtfully. "I'm not sure," she admitted. "It's that echo I told you about earlier, when I asked if you had records of anything happening in that apartment. I've learned more." She told of the encounter she'd had with the summoned spirit, and Kenji nodded.

"Sounds straightforward enough, if bizarre — a murder and kidnapping. So why do you think it might be one of yours?"

"I'm not sure," Nodoka mused. "Partly, it's Noriko, I think she may have been an Awakened that didn't know she was an Awakened — some have suggested that Awakened are more likely to produce echoes than Sleepers. That would give her some ... senses, feelings, that she wouldn't have an explanation for and wouldn't know to trust. I think that was why she sensed something wrong about her lover but didn't act on it more vigorously. Beyond that, I made her a promise."

Kenji nodded again. "I understand. After sixteen years it's a _very_ cold case, one that's not even official, but I'll see what I can find. The file has the details?"

"Of course, everything Noriko could tell me about herself and her lover." Nodoka put down her chopsticks long enough to hand the folder she'd brought across the table. "So, were you able to get an extended lunch break?"

"Yes, I was." He grinned. "Do you want to finish lunch?"

"Now that you mention it ... no."

/\

Kenji closed the door to their usual room at their usual love hotel and turned, expecting his auburn-haired companion's usual grimace accompanied by her usual biting comment about the much too overdone décor. Instead, he found himself knocked back against the wall when Nodoka slammed into him. His eyes widened as her mouth pressed against his hard enough to bruise, one hand tugging his shirt free of his trousers while the other scrabbled open button after button along its front. In moments his shirt was open and she was pushing it back off his shoulders. She pulled him away from the wall and slid the shirt down his arms to fall to the floor before reaching for his belt buckle.

"Whoa, easy!" he exclaimed, pushing her hands away, and almost choked when she actually _growled_. "No-chan, if you keep this up I'll be the only one naked, and that's just not fair!"

She stared at him for a moment, then laughed, and he relaxed slightly as her hands fumbled at her own buttons. Whatever had his ... not submissive, but gentle occasional bedmate so worked up, she was still able to see reason. His own hands grabbed his belt buckle, and in minutes he was standing naked by the bed, as he watched Nodoka slide her panties down and off and kick them to the side to join the rest of their clothes scattered on the floor.

Nodoka straightened and he felt his breath catch, again, thanking his luck as his hungry eyes roamed over large breasts with only a slight sag (for their size), sleekly muscled abdomen, and paused at her shaven mound. Then she was striding toward him and he looked up just as she laid a hand flat against his chest and _pushed_. He stumbled back a couple steps, fell backward when the back of his legs hit the edge of the bed, and she pounced, landing straddled over him on all fours. She stared down at his stunned expression for a moment before giggling and rising up to crouch over his groin. Her hand grabbed him, shifted him into position, and she dropped, slamming him into her deep as he could reach.

Even as he groaned at the sudden tight heat gripping him, his partner stiffened and began to gasp and shake with what Kenji was shocked to realize was her first orgasm. He stared at her for a long moment, then reached for her hips only to pause when she shifted, lifting her knees to place her feet flat on the bed, leaned forward to brace herself with her hands on his stomach, and began to bounce on him, accompanied by a steady stream of "Fuck, yes! Fuck, yes! Fuck, yes!"

He grinned, excited by Nodoka's enthusiasm, and reached around and between her arms to grab onto her swaying breasts. He was rewarded when she paused for a second, sucking in a breath at the sensation of his hands gripping her soft flesh. Then she resumed bouncing with even more energy than before.

Too much energy, Kenji dimly realized, as he felt his own need to release growing. He let go of her breasts to grab her hips, tried to slow her down, failed, and shouted as he thrust his hips up before exploding. She continued bouncing for a bit, until she finally slowed to a stop and lay down atop him, her face resting against his shoulder, her gasping breath hot on his skin.

His arms rose to circle her back. "Sorry I couldn't hold back until you came," he murmured.

" 'Until I came' _again_, I think you mean," she replied, the feel of her breath stuttering when she giggled. "We have time for you to make it up to me."

His soft laugh joined hers. "I suppose we do at that, that was quick," he agreed. "What brought that on? You aren't normally so ... needy."

" 'Needy' is a good word for it." She rolled off of him and reached for the tissues on the bedside table to wipe herself clean. "What I didn't mention at lunch is that my son and his fiancée are sharing a bedroom, just a few rooms away from me, and the soundproofing isn't what it could be. It has been ... frustrating."

"Oooh, a fly in the ointment of your perfect happiness," he teased. "I'm touched that you held off until we could meet, I'd have thought that you'd select another ride from your stable."

Nodoka stilled, then sat up and stared down on him. "There are no other 'rides' in my stable, Kenji, only you alone," she said softly, then giggled when he stiffened in sudden panic. "Relax, I'm not trying to entrap you," she assured him. "It's just that anyone else I'd consider knows me either through business or the kenjutsu tournament circuit. Both worlds are very traditional, and personal reputation matters. You are the only one that knows me as an abandoned ex-wife and Scout that I want to share my bed."

"Ah." Kenji relaxed (and berated himself for his reaction — yes, he'd never wanted more from Nodoka than what they had, but women were often funny that way and he had a very low opinion of men that didn't care). "So, why don't we see about relieving your 'frustration' some more? It should make you easier to live with."

Nodoka froze, eyes going wide, then blushed furiously. "Yes I suppose it might at that," she replied, then before he could ask what _that_ was all about she lay down beside him and kissed him on the mouth as furiously as her blush before trailing kisses down along his neck and chest on the way to his groin. As she reached her destination, all thoughts of her odd reaction to his little jest fled. Damn, but it was good to be alive!


	6. Preparations

I do not own anything written by Rumiko Takahashi or Kosuke Fujishima.

* * *

Kodachi snarled as she stalked into the small, dimly lit curio shop. The shop was empty of customers, but crowded with everything else — shelves full of books, knickknacks, weapons, silverware, jewelry, dishware. The first time the younger Kuno sibling had entered she had felt distinctly uneasy at the way the sheer crush made it impossible to practice her Art at need, without the room for so much as a flip, much less her ribbon. _This_ time, she was too angry to worry about how just entering the shop made her vulnerable. She had been fuming since she had gotten up that morning, building to this moment as the day at school had dragged by.

"Back already?"

The voice of the shop's proprietor came from the back, and a moment later a small, wiry, ancient man stepped around a stack of hats. He bowed deeply then straightened, rubbing the top of his bare head as if slicking back nonexistent hair. "What rare item are you seeking today?"

"You greedy, thieving peasant, how _dare_ you cheat me!" Kodachi shouted, throwing the jeweled amulet she had worn the previous evening at him. "The amulet you sold me was useless, leaving me helpless against that wanton trollop of a spirit that guards the fool who dares face me!"

The shopkeeper snatched the amulet out of the air. "Wait, you mean you faced a _true_ spirit?" he demanded, paling.

"But of course, is that not what I apprised you of when I came seeking a means of detecting her? Thanks to your chicanery those lowborn boors were able to barbarously manhandle me — a Kuno!"

"Oh my, there _has_ been a misunderstanding," the shopkeeper murmured. "When you said that you were haunted by a spirit, I believed that you were plagued by the schoolgirl foolishness I sometimes see of fearing spirits behind every tree and under every bush. This amulet is intended to calm their fears by showing their imaginings for what they are, it won't do for _your_ problem at all!"

Turning, he disappeared into the confusion of shelves and stacks toward the back of the shop. Kodachi hurried to catch up, and found him placing the amulet she had thrown at him into the opened glass case behind the counter from which he had removed it the previous day. "What you need is _this_ one," he said, reaching for a choker that Kodachi had somehow missed on her earlier visit — a black stone that seemed to glow with its own light, centered on a silver band with patterns inlaid in red enamel. He closed the case and turned to lay the choker on a swath of black velvet on the counter. "With _this_ you will be able to see all things supernatural that is hidden from sight."

Kodachi stared at the choker, entranced by its simple beauty. "Yes, this will do marvelously as a replacement for my previous purchase," she murmured, her anger washed away by her admiration, and reached for the choker only to pause as the shopkeeper covered it with his own hand. She looked up to find him shaking his head.

"This piece is much rarer than what I sold you earlier," he said, ignoring the fury again twisting her features. "I will discount what you paid for the piece you returned, but even then..." He turned over the price tag.

Kodachi's eyes bulged. Even if she cut back the lifestyle she was entitled to, lived as one of the common herd, it would take _months_ for her to save enough to pay for it — and by then, the competition would long over. _I should have realized_, she thought even as her eyes drifted back to the gleaming black of the choker's centerpiece. _Of course, it would be odd indeed if the price for such a creation did not match its beauty_. She forced herself to look away, and was glancing furtively about the shop in an attempt to determine the best route for a grab-and-run, when the sound of the shopkeeper clearing his throat drew her attention.

"While as a Kuno you normally should have no difficulty purchasing even an item such as this, I can understand how you might be somewhat short of funds at the moment," he said, "so I will offer you a deal. I'll _loan_ this to you for one week for what you paid for the other amulet. Then you may purchase it later for the full price."

Kodachi drew herself to her full height, looking haughtily down at the shopkeeper. "Normally it is beneath the dignity of a Kuno to bargain, but you are right that my need is great. Very well, I accept your offer."

The shopkeeper bowed as deeply as when she'd first entered, and minutes later Kodachi was out of the store. She felt herself relax as she once again had room to maneuver and glanced around, then froze — across the street a pair of tiny naked people with bumblebee wings was playing a game of tag among the branches of a tree. The choker even worked audibly, she could faintly hear their high-pitched laughter as the female caught the male by a heel and yanked him down toward her. The two settled on a broad branch, and — Kodachi hurriedly looked away from the proof that the creatures were like humans in more than just appearance, blushing even as laughter bubbled up from inside her. It really worked! To give her such an artifact for the price of a bauble, what a fool! She spun in place, whirling her ribbon around her, then in a shower of rose petals sprang for the roof of the shop and bound across the rooftops for home, her mocking laughter trailing behind her.

/\

The shopkeeper listened to the sound of his customer's laughter fading into the distance, rubbed his hand across his bald head, and chuckled. Then he closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and as he blew it out his shape stretched and shifted, morphing until the tall, fiery-haired, tattooed demoness Calise stood in his place. "Gotcha!" she murmured. With that choker, Kodachi would never return to the store — and she would _owe_ Calise. It wasn't as good as a contract for her soul, but those were always iffy when it came to the insane — Asgard usually contested them, and won the challenges often enough that Hild's people preferred to avoid the possibility. And after the day's delay and her humiliation the previous night, she was going to be _very_ angry when she finally caught up with Ranma again.

"Did all go as you had hoped, My Lady?"

She turned to find the shopkeeper that Kodachi thought she had been dealing with stepping out of the backroom. "Yes, Katsu-san, it did, thank you. I consider your debt to be paid," she said graciously. She made her farewells and left the shopkeeper bowing deeply behind her as she followed Kodachi out into the street. It had been a _very_ good day. True, she had just put a potent artifact back in circulation, but it was in the hands of a lunatic who had zero chance of using it to its full potential — and with the tracker on it, once Kodachi failed to return it as promised Calise could reacquire it whenever she chose. And it was of human manufacture, not demonic, so she didn't need to worry about Nabiki noticing any demonic 'taint' and suspecting that Mara was maneuvering to up the pressure on her. _And since Mara doesn't know a thing about it, if Nabiki asks she can truthfully say that she doesn't know a thing about it. I wonder if I should suggest that she keep an eye on Nabiki tomorrow? That lunatic doesn't have the patience to put off a second attempt, and it should be quite a show — just the thing to help Mara get a good laugh. She's been a bit stressed, lately._ After a moment's consideration, the demoness reluctantly rejected the thought — Mara would need more plausible deniability than that would give. But Calise could make sure the imps spying on Nabiki and Ranma recorded the show, and give Mara a personal viewing after it was all over. It might not have as much punch —

A faint, high-pitched squeal of pleasure interrupted her thought, and she scowled at the tiny pair of sprites copulating on the tree branch across the street. She considered herself a free-living, free-loving modern girl, but those flighty sprites had absolutely no shame! Though of course, there were very few people that could actually see or hear them, so she supposed it didn't matter _that_ much where they took their fun. _How did that description of bungee-jumping go, all the thrill of suicide with none of the commitment?_ Oooh, she was going to have to remember _that_ variation for her next night on the town, it looked like fun.

/oOo\

From her seat at her bedroom desk, Nabiki glanced up from her textbook at the sound of someone knocking on her doorframe. She blinked tired eyes to take in the figure in the doorway (the short nap she'd grabbed on getting home while Ranma and Akane did their homework didn't seem to have helped much), then straightened at the sight of her mother-in-law in all but name. _No, my sensei at the moment_, she thought, trying not to groan as she took in the worn keikogi and hakama that Nodoka wore for her — and now Nabiki's — training in kenjutsu. "That time already?" she asked, glancing toward the clock and frowning at the early hour, then back at her sensei. There was something different about her...

"No, I know I'm a little early," Nodoka replied, "but I thought that if we took care of the training early, you could spend a little more time soaking in the furo before Ranma gives you your massage."

_Okay, let's shortstop that_. "Actually, Mother — Sensei — I have something to show you." Nabiki closed her textbook and shoved it aside, then turned for her schoolbag (wincing as the shift pulled still-sore muscles). She pulled out the sheets of paper with the various Circle diagrams she had spent her school day working on. "I didn't mention it this morning because between practice and getting ready for the day we didn't have time to really discuss it, but Ranma, Akane and I had an interesting afternoon yesterday..."

/\

"So what do you think?" Nabiki asked from where she sat on her bed, as Nodoka sat at her desk, closely examining each preliminary Circle diagram before turning over the sheet for the next. _Please please please _please_ let her think this is more important than training!_

Even as the mantra repeated itself in her mind, Nabiki frowned. What _was_ it that was so different about her sensei? She didn't _look_ any different — the auburn-haired woman was the same poised, collected woman she always was even in her worn workout clothes. _Okay, if she doesn't look different, then she must _feel_ different._ Nabiki closed her eyes as Nodoka shuffled through her small stack of diagrams, focused on what she was sensing from the older woman, analyzing the mix of emotions she was picking up as she tried to remember what she'd felt that morning during their workout. There didn't seem to be anything added, maybe something missing? But what?

"These aren't bad for a first draft, but —"

Nabiki's eye flew open. "You got _laid_!"

" ... what?"

"I'm sorry!" Nabiki exclaimed, waving her hands in a ward-off gesture as her cheeks burned fiery red. "It's just there was something different about you and I couldn't figure out what it was but something was missing and it was what I've picked up constantly from boys at school and ... and ... shutting up now," she finished in a barely audible voice, shoulders hunched. When her sensei got her into the dojo, she was going to get such a _beating_...

Nodoka sighed and lay down the last Circle diagram she had been examining, then turned to face her daughter-in-law. "Do you think Ranma noticed?" she asked, her own cheeks tinged pink.

Nabiki frowned thoughtfully as she straightened. Ranma and Akane had been long gone before his mother got home, so she wasn't asking about her ... her _relaxed_ state, so ...

"Ranma _sensed_ it, she wouldn't have been able to help it," Nabiki said slowly, then shrugged. "But whether she understood what she was sensing ... probably not. It's not like you were _attracted_ to her, after all, just ..." Her voice trailed off, and Nodoka finished the sentence.

"Just needy."

"Well ... yes," Nabiki agreed. "And since she'll have been picking up the same 'need' from just about every teenage boy she's been around, I doubt she's figured out what it is, yet, or why you might have it when other adults don't, so much."

"It hasn't been easy, being just a few rooms down the hall from you two, with the walls as thin as they are," Nodoka grumbled. "I'll just have to see if I can ... 'get laid', as you so _eloquently_ put it, more regularly."

Nabiki blushed again. That made the second person they were sharing a floor with to have issues with her and Ranma's evening fun, and she had no doubt she and Ranma had been just as hard on Kasumi — her older sister simply wasn't the type to complain. "We'll try to be less noisy, and less ... here," she promised. There was always that mini-grove in the corner of the park, and it wasn't like anyone ... hardly anyone ... could actually see Ranma in spirit form. And with the succubus's ability to reach through clothes Nabiki didn't _need_ to be naked, though with how sweaty and wet she got... _I'm going to have to do my own laundry, it's not fair handing _that_ off to Kasumi_.

She waved at the small stack of papers. "You were saying?" she asked.

Nodoka hastily turned back to the desk, and Nabiki suppressed a grin at the sheer relief she was picking up from her sensei at the change of subject. "These aren't bad for a first draft," Nodoka repeated, "but there are a few problems. The bonding itself isn't an issue, not if Akane and Ranma are truly willing, but the more powerful kami are actually able to be in more than one place at a time and to shift themselves between places, so a link is sufficient — they can simply split their attention when they feel the call and answer the summons themselves. Ranma can't do that, so you probably need to incorporate some sort of summoning element into this. I'll need to read what your books have to say about this bonding ritual, of course..."

/oOo\

Late that night, two tiny heads peaked up over the windowsill of Nabiki's open window, one blonde and one brunette, looking down at her blanket-covered sleeping body directly below them. She was alone in the bed and Ranma wasn't in her succubus form practicing katas in the yard, so ...

"I wonder what dream they're sharing tonight?" Cherry Blossom whispered to the brown-haired sprite hovering beside her.

Peach Fuzz shrugged. "Not sex, whatever it is, not with what Ranma said about that and Nabiki's dreamscape," she murmured back. "Hopefully, it'll keep them occupied, come on."

The two sprites drifted along the windowsill to the edge of the window, up along the edge of the window to the top, then inside and up to the ceiling as far from the sleeping girl below them as they could manage. They grabbed onto the ceiling and froze for a moment when Nabiki shifted in her sleep, muttered something and rolled over. They held their breath until the girl's own breathing again evened out, slowly resumed moving along the ceiling until they were hovering directly above her desk, then just as slowly sank until they landed crouching on the desktop, and waited.

Minute after minute passed by without a hint that they had disturbed Nabiki's sleep, and they finally straightened. "Where is it?" Peach Fuzz whispered.

"I think we're standing on it."

"Oh."

The two sprites began to glow, slowly brightening to a dim glow that revealed the sheet of paper they had landed on, covered with multiple circles of letters and symbols surrounded by scribbled notes. They knelt to closely examine the circles, and Cherry Blossom murmured, "This is it, all right, and it looks like Sweet Grass was right. Peach Fuzz, do you really want to do this? As long as she's likely to live —"

Peach Fuzz nodded. "Yes, I'm sure. True, she's _way_ too serious, but she's human — they're _all_ too serious. Even Ranma hasn't learned to lighten up, yet. And she's good people, I'll be all right."

"Okay, as long as you're sure. Let's go."

Their bodies' glow faded away, and the two sprites slowly drifted up toward the ceiling to reverse their journey back towards the window.


	7. Round Two!

I do not own anything written by Rumiko Takahashi or Kosuke Fujishima.

* * *

Ranma chuckled as she floated along beside the younger Tendo sisters. In spite of the long night she had spent in her student's room on guard from a possible attack, and her self-assumed need to constantly scan their surroundings for the same, she was feeling rather cheerful. Partly that was because she was actually _doing_ something besides floating around on guard duty, even if only going to school, and partly because of her memories of the ... entertainment ... Nabiki had put on that morning while training with Nodoka. She glanced over at her limping fiancée and considered commenting on her morning performance — especially the unorthodox twist that she'd used to try to avoid one low strike that was responsible now for her uneven walk — but rapidly discarded the thought. He and Nabiki were still getting to know the fine points about each other, but Ranma had already learned the hard way that Nabiki was _not_ amused by loss of dignity ... when _she_ was the butt of the joke, at least. Of course, her own empathic sense meant she was perfectly aware of her fiancé's amusement, but they were _also_ learning to ignore some of each other's emotional states if the other didn't comment on them. _Besides, I got more important things ta talk ta her about_, the succubus thought, sobering.

Sensing the change of mood, Nabiki glanced over at the succubus before looking around and frowning — her lover's emotional shift didn't feel urgent, so she wasn't worried about another attack ... at least not immediately ... but she couldn't see anything to account for the shift, either. "Ranma, what is it?" she quietly asked as she shifted the strap of the bag holding Ranma's clothes higher up on her shoulder.

Akane glanced toward where she could sense her sensei (and current bodyguard, not that she'd been informed of that) floating beside her even as Ranma replied, "Not sure. Ya had a couple visitors last night."

"Visitors?" Nabiki's frown deepened.

"Yeah, Cherry Blossom an' another sprite, one I don't know. There was a wall between me an' them —" From where she'd spent the night floating just under Akane's ceiling, but Ranma figured saying so where Akane could hear would be a bad idea. "— so they must not a' known I could see 'em when they came through the window."

"_Cherry Blossom?"_ Nabiki asked incredulously. "Why would _she_ be visiting in the middle of the night?"

Ranma shrugged. "Dunno," she replied. "They snuck over ta yer desk for a few minutes, then left."

Now Nabiki's frown was confused as she tried to remember what had been on her desk when she'd packed for school. "Did they move anything?"

Ranma shook her head. "Naw, just lit up so they could see what they were doin'."

"But that makes no sense!" Nabiki protested. "The only thing on my desk were the diagrams for the linking ceremony for you and Akane that your ... that Sensei and I worked on yesterday." She blushed as she remembered all the errors Nodoka had found with the circles she'd come up with, however much her sensei had been impressed by the concept, and hastily continued, "Sprites don't _do_ ceremonies, all their magic is inherent, like yours! And can sprites even read?"

Ranma shrugged again even as she scanned the roofs of the houses along their side of the block for a certain Kuno nutcase hiding out of sight of anyone but her. The conversation made it easier for her to ignore the for-all-practical-purposes naked people, mostly women, inside the homes. Though she was becoming inured to the sight of naked flesh again, especially when said body was far enough away that she couldn't pick up emotions. "I dunno if they can read," she said, "but whatever they were lookin' for, they found it. They stopped huntin' and left too fast for anything else."

Then the three turned the corner and the wall around the school grounds came into view, and Ranma grinned. "I wonder if Kuno's worked up the nerve ta challenge us again," she commented. "He sure feels like he wants ta."

Nabiki's sigh was covered by her little sister's growl. She laid a warning hand on Akane's arm to calm her. "Ranko, he wants to challenge _Ranma_, not you," she said, slightly louder than usual. "I know you share memories, but don't get them mixed up."

Ranma stopped searching for Kodachi to look over at Nabiki in confusion. Nabiki surreptitiously glanced around at the other students headed for Furinkan's main gates, some of them possibly within earshot, and the succubus blushed at the resigned amusement coming from her fiancée as she looked around and remembered their cover story. "Yeah, right, challenge _Ranma_," she muttered.

"How long do you think it will be until _I'm_ ready to challenge him?" Akane quietly asked. Actually, she'd been quiet ever since the evening Kodachi had attacked her. Grimly determined to win, afraid she'd fail, _very_ nervous about the upcoming ceremony they'd need to perform linking her to Ranma if she couldn't learn rhythmic gymnastics martial arts fast enough, resigned about her chances of managing that ... no, Akane was not a happy girl. Nabiki was mildly surprised that her younger sister wasn't taking her fears and frustrations out on everyone around her, maybe her little sister was actually growing up a little. _Maybe we're_ all_ growing up a little_, she thought, _In more ways than one._ She glanced toward her lover with a fond, only slightly lascivious smile.

Sensing her fiancée's attention — and the direction her thoughts were taking, or at least her emotions, Ranma grinned at her. "Ya sure you're not the succubus?" she murmured, before sobering and turning to an eye-rolling Akane rapidly growing irritated. "I dunno, Akane," she hurriedly continued as the three passed through the gates onto the school grounds. "The trainin' ya been doin' with Ryoga is good fer speed an' dodgin' an' that'll help, but most'a it's useless outside a' the ring. Once we get past the competition —"

"Oh ho ho ho ho!"

Ranma's head snapped around at the spine-twisting laughter (not that she had a spine to twist at the moment). She'd been watching! And with the way she could barely see nonliving material Kodachi couldn't hide behind —

Kodachi dropped down from the tree branch she'd been crouched on — the _leaf-shrouded_ branch, that had shielded her from Ranma's Sight — to land crouched yards from the three girls. She was clad in the same style purple leotard and sash she'd worn two nights before, though the jewel she'd worn before had been replaced by a silver choker with a black jewel that, to Nabiki's and Ranma's eyes, shone with magic. As she straightened her gaze was fixed on the girl that would face her in the ring in less than a week, and both Ranma and Akane could see both the ribbon she'd whipped out to spin around her and the slim club in her other hand were shining with imbued life-energy.

"Careful," Ranma murmured, "she can't match ya hand-ta-hand so give me a moment ta get around ta her side. Then close as quick as ya can, but don't get cocky even if she isn't carryin' a sledgehammer. Nabiki, get outta the way 'fore she decides ta make ya a target."

"You got it, stud, be careful," Nabiki acknowledged, radiating worry.

A tense Akane jerked a nod. "Didn't you learn anything the first time you ambushed me?" she asked their attacker as Nabiki backed away toward the school's main doors and Ranma flew a half-circle around toward Kodachi's side.

"I suppose a peasant such as yourself must be as stupid as you are churlish," the off-side pony-tailed girl replied haughtily, her undulating ribbon shifting from circling around her to spiraling out between the two girls. "I told you before, only the hoi polloi 'ambush' others. I simply compete _before_ the assigned date of our meeting."

"Yeah, right," Akane snorted. _Okay, Nabiki's out of the way._ She shifted her attention over toward her sensei as she continued, "I think you're just afraid that someone will show you up for the poser you are in front of an audience." She ignored her opponent's sputtered response as she watched the floating _something_ she'd learned to identify as her sensei out of the corner of her eye. The patch reached a point directly to the side of the insane Kuno girl and rotated until it was stretched out horizontally, vaguely shaped like a Superman pose. _Show time!_

Ranma sighed as she saw her student tense up — Akane was telegraphing her attacks _again_! She'd stopped doing that when sparring with either of her current sensei, finally, but apparently when the fight was for real she reverted to old habits. _We'll_ _have to work on that,_ the nude redhead thought even as she started her own charge forward — and the plan abruptly fell apart.

Even as Akane began her own charge Kodachi spun to the side, and Ranma suddenly found the Kuno's ribbon whipping toward her. She fought to 'roll' out of the way to get outside of the spiral, but failed to get beyond the edge of the spinning vortex before it reached her. In the blink of an eye, she found her arms pinned to her sides and her legs locked together as the ki-infused ribbon wrapped around her from her head to her feet, even her eyes and mouth covered. _Damn it, this's the _second_ time I've been surprised 'cause I thought someone couldn't see me when they could! What's _wrong_ with me?_

Ranma struggled for a moment as the ribbon tightened like a living thing — some kind of ki-effect, like Ryoga's hardened, sharp bandana boomerangs? — but abandoned the effort immediately. Her succubus form just wasn't _strong_ enough! And with her frustrating inability to push herself past fixed limits, it never would be.

But there were different kinds of 'strength' and she rocketed skyward. Kodachi yelped when Ranma hit the end of the ribbon like an Atlantic blue marlin dancing on the end of a line, the impact yanking the gymnast's arm straight up and almost dislocating her shoulder. But the Kodachi managed to keep her grip on the ribbon's handle, and her eyes widened in shock when she found herself yanked off the ground instead — just in time to be knocked spinning up when Akane's fist slammed into her midsection.

If Kodachi hadn't already been off the ground and in motion, the blow would probably have sent her to the hospital with internal injuries. As it was, even as she curled around the blow she was being pulled skyward, and managed to kick off against Akane's chest and used the momentum to angle her upward flight, catching a large branch with her ribbon and spinning around it several times as she fought to maintain her concentration, and so keeping her ki shining through the ribbon and Ranma trapped in its embrace.

She _almost_ managed it, but the shining ki flickered for a moment, and Ranma instantly renewed her struggle to break out. She manage to free one hand and shake the ribbon away from her face before the ki-glow renewed itself and again locked her tight. She looked down just in time to see Akane spring up toward their enemy, only to meet Kodachi's club coming down, smashing right between her eyes. Her unconscious student flopped bonelessly back to the ground.

"Akane!" Nabiki shouted, voice harsh with panic. She couldn't use the killing curse, she couldn't! She didn't know how badly her sister had been hurt, and while the magic jewel at Kodachi's throat obviously allowed her to see the succubus, ki-charged weapons couldn't actually _kill_ Ranma — just hurt her, maybe even discorporate her for awhile. Besides, if Kodachi's will proved too strong and the curse reflected back at Nabiki, the result would be _very_ unpleasant, perhaps fatal.

_But if she _does_ really hurt Ranma or Akane, I'm getting some of her hair and taking the time to do the curse right, full ceremony,_ Nabiki thought, snarling as her eyes scanned the lawn around her. She cursed the efficiency of the groundskeepers, not a stone to be seen. Yanking open her school bag, she pulled out one of her textbooks and ran forward toward the gymnast now sitting with her legs wrapped around the branch and her club tucked under one thigh as she reeled in the ribbon hand over hand along with her still-struggling prey.

Kodachi glanced down at the shouting older girl just in time for the thrown school book to smack into her forehead, snapping her head back and almost knocking her off her perch. "Wait your turn, peasant, I'll deal with you as soon as I've shown this guttersnipe — woah!"

Now able to see, Ranma had taken advantage of Kodachi's distraction and now the still-bound succubus slammed into her midriff. Even as tiny as the nature spirit was and as short as the flight had been, she managed to knock Kodachi off her perch. But the gymnast simply whipped around the branch and back up to her seat, catching her falling club in the process and ignoring the scrapes behind her knee as she took the ribbon with her.

Ranma found herself with almost no free ribbon at all, practically bound to the branch. She struggled again to free herself, as uselessly as before, and growled, "If ya touch Nabs, I will hunt ya down and _hurt_ you!"

"I would be more concerned about your own well-deserved punishment," Kodachi purred, even as her club batted aside another thrown book. Ranma winced at her vicious smile, the outward sign of the sheer malevolent anger she was radiating. The gymnast pressed a stud in her club's handle, and spikes sprang out to circle around its end. "Manhandle _me_, throw _me_ out into the street like discarded garbage, will you?"

Ranma glared defiantly at Kodachi as the gymnast lifted the now-spiked club. The succubus braced herself to ignore the coming pain. _Remember, Nabs said you're a human-shaped bundle a' energy, not real, an' there's no way she can beat on ya with those spikes without damaging the ribbon —_ The succubus's train of thought was cut off when she was abruptly yanked toward the ground, along with the branch she was bound to, and her suddenly flailing enemy. She heard the air gush from Kodachi's lungs as the other girl slammed onto the lawn, _felt_ the ki suffusing her bindings flicker, and then abruptly fade. She was free!

As the now harmless ribbon fell through her to the grass Ranma rocketed up, fists clenched. "All right! My turn now, ya —" She froze, hovering in mid-air, eyes wide at the sight of Kuno Tatewaki standing between her and Kodachi, glaring at his sister as he shook dirt from his bokken. Almost of their own volition, Ranma's eyes dropped to find a trench in the grass, slicing through the ribbon that had bound her. She looked up at the tree. Sure enough, the stump of the branch she had been bound to showed a clean cut, not a break. _I ... Kuno ... he ... why ..._ Catching movement out of the corner of her eye, she glanced down to find Nabiki kneeling by her unconscious sister. _Akane!_ She shook herself free of her shock and realized that the kendoist was speaking.

" ... not permit you to pursue this dishonorable quest against the fair Akane and the unfortunate spirit maiden," Tatewaki said, sternly frowning at his younger sister. "Surely the way that the villainous miscreant Saotome has bound them to his whims through foul sorcery is misfortune enough! If face them you must, it shall be according to the traditions of the noble sport that you sully by your behavior."

"As if you know anything of the proper pursuit of victory," Kodachi replied haughtily. "But I fear that you have ruined my sport this morning, so I shall take my leave. Oh, ho, ho, ho, ho!" She spun in place, a wide swirl of rose petals whipped out around her, and Ranma watched as she leaped up out of the cloud, landed on a wide branch of the tree, sprang over the school wall, and in a couple of bounds was across the street and gone across the rooftops.

/oOo\

Nabiki turned back the blanket and top sheet, and Ranma floated over the bed to gently lower down a furiously blushing Akane. (She'd been fighting the urge to squirm at the sensation of Ranma's bare breasts pressed against her skin right through her school uniform, the entire time the succubus had flown her first to Dr. Tofu's clinic then home.)

"Now remember, the doc said plenty of rest for the rest of the day," Nabiki reminded her sister as she tucked her blankets around her. "Your training with ki may mean he doesn't need to send you to the hospital for a more thorough examination or keep you for observation, but that was still quite a hit you took — and if you aren't recovered enough to go to school tomorrow, Kuno will be here knocking down the door to make sure you're all right! It was all I could do to talk him out of personally summoning an ambulance, and the only way I was able to convince him not to accompany us to the clinic was by saying that you'd be insulted by the suggestion that you couldn't look out for yourself. And he looked doubtful, at that."

Ranma snorted. "Maybe that's 'cause I was pickin' her up at the time," she said. "Get yer rest, Akane, I'll let Ryoga know that ya won't be there tonight. An' once Kasumi gets home from shoppin' I'm sure she'll be up with somethin'."

"That sounds great, thank you," Akane murmured, closing her eyes.

_Little sis is being way too calm about this. _For a moment, Nabiki considered mentioning that she had hinted that a date with Akane _might_ be forthcoming if the upperclassman backed off — a perhaps ill-conceived but desperate measure to deal with a _very_ insistent would-be suitor, but Nabiki had been both stunned by the help he'd provided and worried about her sister and so perhaps not thinking clearly. Besides, it wasn't like _she_ would be the one going out with the pompous (but apparently useful upon occasion) fool. But she quickly squashed the idea — that would certainly get a rise out of her sister, but chasing her middle sister around the house screaming at the top of her lungs wouldn't do Akane's concussion any good at all. _Tomorrow. Or maybe the next day. Actually, after the competition would be good, don't want to distract little sis. Yeah, right, like _that's_ all you're concerned about._ Still, there was no need to be afraid, she'd have Ranma to protect her from her enraged sister, after all. Right? _Yeah, right, Ranma's going to be cheering her on, and Mother Nodoka'll probably treat it as training in evasion and escape — from the job title, I'll bet a Scout gets a lot of use out of that particular skill set._

On that cheery thought, Nabiki stepped over to the window to close the curtains, then motioned Ranma to follow her toward the door (not that the succubus needed to use it, or could hardly see it, for that matter). She'd just turned off the light and was about to close the door, when Akane spoke up.

"Nabiki, is that bonding ritual you were talking about ready?"

Nabiki paused, looking at her sister lying in her bed, arm over her eyes. "I think so, yes. Mother Nodoka provisionally signed off on it last night."

"What's my part?"

"Well ..." Nabiki shrugged. "You and Ranma basically sit — or float — in separate circles and listen while Mother Nodoka and I spend about an hour chanting."

Akane sat up in her bed and said, "Good, we're doing it tonight."

Nabiki stared at her sister for a long moment. In truth, she'd half expected Akane to back out at the last moment, considering how nervous magic still made her. "Are you sure?" she finally asked.

"Oh, hell, yes! Whatever it takes, that _bitch_ is going down!"

_Okay, that's more like the Akane I know_. She glanced over at Ranma, still floating in the hall, and grimaced when the redheaded gamin spirit shrugged and nodded. "All right, I'll give Mother Nodoka a call and let her know we've moved up the date. Now lie back down and get some rest."

Akane nodded, winced, and lay back down, and Nabiki gently closed the door. Turning to Ranma, she whispered, "You'll keep an eye on her?"

"Yeah, on the roof right outside her window," her lover whispered back. "No way that nutcase is catchin' me by surprise again."

"Good, I'll leave a note for Kasumi before I leave." She reached up and pressed a finger across the succubus's lips to stop her instant protest. "I have to do some shopping of my own for some special foci for tonight's ceremony, and the Amazons need to be told we won't be there this afternoon."

"Nabiki, it's not safe ..." Ranma paused at a sudden thought, then grinned. "Why don't ya see if any a' the elders wanna go shoppin' with ya? I'll bet they'd like ta see what we got here, magic-wise. An' there's no way Kodachi could take one a' those tough old biddies."

"Now, _that_ is an excellent thought, I'll do that," Nabiki agreed, grinning back. "Just don't ever let any of them hear you call them that, or you may learn just how good they really are." She pulled Ranma toward her for a long kiss, then pushed her away. "Now get on guard, I have to hurry if I'm going to have time to get everything."

"Uh ... right."

Nabiki watched as the redhead now sporting a goofy grin floated through the ceiling to take up her guard position, then sighed and hurried to their room for the debit card for her special bank account, her cell phone, and a pen and pad of paper. It was going to be a _long_ tiring day and an unfortunately early night. Again, dammit. "Maybe Ranma's nature really _is_ contagious," she muttered as she dumped her school bag out on her bed and grabbed her pad of paper.


	8. Welcome to Our World

I do not own anything written by Rumiko Takahashi or Kosuke Fujishima.

* * *

In the room that had been Genma and Ranma's guest bedroom and was now Nodoka's permanent home, Nabiki was _very_ happy that she'd thought to wear a sweatband. This wasn't the first ritual she'd performed that was over an hour long. It wasn't the first ritual with another person chanting along with her. It wasn't the first ritual she'd performed practically the same day she'd researched and drawn it up. It _was _the first time for all three, and by now she was almost trembling with the effort to keep her arms positioned _just_ so where she stood inside her own circle (gratefully, trembling only for minutes, not the full hour), her voice going hoarse from keeping it pitched to match Nodoka's, the sweatband about her head damp from the stress of remembering the full ceremony she'd hastily memorized while smoothly segueing through each step. Her concentration wasn't helped by the waves of boredom/fear/boredom radiating from where raven-haired girl and fiery-haired succubus stood/floated in their own circles.

But now she and her sensei were _finally_ reaching the end, the two voices merged for the final ringing phrases, they straightened and clapped their hands together to join two destinies, froze in place … and waited. And waited. Nothing.

As Akane sagged in relief, Ranma commented, "Ya know, I expected that ta be more spectacular."

Nabiki sighed. "That's because it didn't work," she said. "Nodoka-sensei, what did I do wrong?"

"Nothing, you were perfect," Nodoka replied. "In fact, you were _too_ perfect. Magic will accept a little slippage if intent is strong, dear, and if you don't learn to relax and pace yourself the _really_ long rituals will be beyond your reach."

Nabiki shuddered — the ritual they'd just performed had been quite long enough for her, the thought of even longer ones wasn't a pleasant one.

Akane asked, "So can we get out of the circles?"

"Yeah, sure," Nabiki replied with a nod, barely noticing the edge in her sister's voice as she focused on their failure. She _did_ notice when Akane all but stomped over to drop onto the bed — Akane was an interesting mix of relief and frustration, she apparently couldn't decide whether to be upset or pleased at the turn of events. Shrugging at Ranma's questioning look, Nabiki asked, "So what did we miss?"

"You mean what did _I_ miss, and if I knew I wouldn't have missed it," Nodoka replied, a sharp edge to her voice matching her frustration. She paused to fight for her usual iron control, then sighed. "My apologies, I should not be snapping at my student when the fault lies with the sensei. I will review the ritual, but cannot promise that I will be able to determine my error in time for the match. You should come up with an alternative plan. Unless perhaps the Amazon elders could help us?"

Nabiki instantly shook her head, then paused as she considered her knee-jerk reaction, and her shopping expedition that afternoon with Ku Lon and Dao Paz. The two elders had been curious, often dismissive, occasionally impressed, but always alert to everything around them — especially in the backroom where the magic shop Nabiki frequented kept the _real_ goods. And the questions they'd asked… Finally, she slowly said, "Nooo, I don't think that would be a good idea. I like them, but I don't _trust_ them ... not with this. They have their own agenda beyond collecting Ryoga, and I don't know what it is. Until I do, I don't want them near any ritual this ... intrusive."

Nodoka considered her student's words, then nodded. "You have had more exposure to them, in this you would know best," she agreed. "So what do you do now?"

"Now, now, now, no need to panic, Cherry Blossom is here with the solutions to your problems! Well, the solution to _this_ problem, anyway."

Nabiki whipped around at the sound of the sprite's voice, to find Cherry Blossom and Peach Fuzz sitting on the windowsill, bouncing their heels on the wall and grinning, bubbling with delight at everyone's shock at their presence. Well, Nabiki and Akane's shock, anyway. Ranma was alert but had clearly known they were there, and Nodoka was simply amused.

"We need to work on your situational awareness, student," the older woman said mock-sternly, then glanced thoughtfully at Akane. "You could probably use the practice, as well." Putting aside her amusement, she turned back to bow to their uninvited guests. "Welcome. Please don't take offense, but may I ask how you know just what our problem is?"

Nabiki glanced sharply at her sensei. Nodoka was ... not nervous, certainly not concerned, but she was definitely _respectful_. Turning her attention back to the two tiny nature spirits, the high school girl considered them just as closely — they were just sprites! _Only for Nodoka to feel the way she does, either they aren't what they appear or there is nothing 'just' about sprites._ She giggled slightly as she thought how, for someone that had prided herself in always being in control, she was spending a lot of time recently floundering in a sea of unknowns and maybes.

At the sound of her amusement, Peach Fuzz grinned at her, then flew up from the window sill to circle the middle Tendo's head before settling on her shoulder. "The Ice Queen is developing a sense of humor, wonderful! That will make things _much_ easier," the tiny brunette enthused before leaning over to peck her cheek.

"Make _what_ easier?"Akane demanded from where she sat.

From the window sill where she still sat, Cherry Blossom replied, "Why, getting you and that cutie hooked up!" She flew up to circle Akane, and the girl started back from what must have looked to her like a tiny, humanoid featureless blob.

Nabiki could feel her sister's nervousness rapidly turning into anger, and hastily asked, "So just what were we doing wrong?"

Cherry Blossom abandoned Akane to fly over and hover in front of Nabiki. "Why, you weren't doing _anything_ wrong," she said. "Your idea was brilliant! So was Nodoka's refinement of your idea, the two of you make a _fine_ team." She leaned forward where she hovered to tap Nabiki's nose. She whispered, "And believe me, I've seen a _lot_ of Initiates at work."

Nabiki's crossed eyes tried to widen. She asked, "Cherry Blossom, how old _are_ you?"

"Ah, ah, ah ..." The blonde sprite shook a finger at the teenager. "Nabiki, you know better than that! Never ask a woman her age — _especially_ when you are wondering how old she is."

"Now, C.B., be nice," Peach Fuzz said sternly from her perch on Nabiki's shoulder, "you _did_ lead her into that, after all." Her bumblebee wings carried her out into the middle of the room, where she could be seen by all the bigger people as Cherry Blossom returned to the window sill. "Like Cherry Blossom said, your ritual was perfect. But you forgot to take an important factor into account — the Voice."

"The Voice?" Nabiki asked. She glanced at her sensei, and Nodoka motioned for her to continue. "But why would that make a difference? It doesn't interfere with the familiar bond, after all. Can Initiates with familiar-bonded nature spirits even sense the Voice?"

"Yes, they can, if they know about it," Peach Fuzz replied, voice going grim. "And when they do know about it and use nature spirit familiars for info-diving in the Voice, they lose a _lot_ of familiars. The Voice is dangerous. That's one of the reasons you won't find much about the Voice in your records — we don't talk about the Voice except with Initiates we know we can trust, and they don't pass along what they learn. We wouldn't be talking about it with _you — _well, except for Nodoka, she already knows — if it wasn't for Ranma, so _please_ don't spread this around."

She circled the room, glaring at the three teenagers in turn as they hastily nodded, then in an eye-blink she was reverted to the usual sprite-perkiness, making Nabiki go cross-eyed again as she hovered in front of her and tapped her nose. "Now you have all the answers, let's make putting them together a lesson for the student," she intoned, before spinning around Nabiki's head and flying over to the window, giggling all the while.

Nabiki stared as Peach Fuzz settled down to sit cross-legged next to Cherry Blossom, wondering for a moment which was the act — the mock-lightheartedness, or the mock-seriousness — before setting the question aside for later as she closed her eyes and considered what the sprite had said. _Let's see, the Voice doesn't stop Initiates from forcing nature spirits into familiar bonds, so it can't be that we're essentially imposing the bond on Ranma and Akane. And it certainly doesn't stop the powerful nature spirits the Initiates of the West call gods from bonding with their chosen champions, so it can't be the level of intelligence or power of the nature spirit. The only real difference here is that Sensei and I are acting as conduits —_

Nabiki's eyes popped open. "It's because Sensei and I aren't the ones forming the bond, isn't it?" she demanded. "One or both of us needs to be linked to the Voice to set up the bond."

Cherry Blossom clapped. "Very good!" she enthused. "Nodoka must be _delighted_ to have such a bright student!"

"No," Nabiki said flatly.

The two sprites exchanged puzzled glances. Peach Fuzz asked, " 'No', what? No, Nodoka isn't delighted, or no, you aren't bright?"

"The nature spirit I'd need to take as a familiar would have to be sapient, wouldn't it?"

"Yes," Cherry Blossom agreed, "nonsapient nature spirits don't have the same kind of link to the Voice."

"That's what I thought." Nabiki crossed her arms and glared at the two visitors. "Even if Sensei and I could cast a strong enough ritual to overcome its resistance , I am _not_ hunting down and capturing some random nature spirit and forcing it to become my familiar, just so Akane can win a stupid competition."

Everyone ignored Akane's shouted "Hey!" as they watched the two sprites exchange glances. Cherry Blossom shrugged, and Peach Fuzz flew up to hover again in front of Nabiki. She asked, "And what if you had a volunteer?"

"Yeah, right!" Nabiki scoffed. "And why would someone want to enslave himself —" She broke off as she remembered the aftermath of Gosunkugi's successful summoning of Ranma, and how she'd talked to Peach Fuzz as they'd watched Ranma amidst a cloud of sprites in the air above the koi pond, dancing to a rhythm Nabiki couldn't hear. And she remembered what the sprite had told her. She asked, "The familiar bond cuts both ways, doesn't it? Just like the master can sense her familiar's emotions, use its senses, the familiar can do the same with the master. Right?"

"Yup!"

"Peach Fuzz," Nabiki said softly, "We won't be able to break the familiar bond later. Do you really want to know what it's like to be in love _that_ much? So much that you're willing to enslave yourself for the rest of my life? Do you really trust me that much?"

"Yes, it is that important to me, and yes, I trust you that much." The sprite slowly circled Nabiki. "Your aura has cleared up remarkably since you met Ranma," she said, then grinned, and flashed across the room to settle on top of Ranma's fiery mane. "Besides, you have Ranma here to keep you in line! If you get too harsh I'll just tell _this_ little hottie, and she'll guilt you until you apologize. Besides, I'm too small for you." She stood and struck a pose that had Nabiki and Nodoka blushing, and waited until their laughter died away. "So let's do it," she said, voice abruptly switching back to deadly serious.

/oOo\

It wasn't that simple, of course. Since Gosunkugi's summoning Nabiki had had a few nightmares of Ranma being forced into exactly the situation that Peach Fuzz wanted to embrace, and had no desire to put herself in the place of Ranma's faceless dream-master. (Even in her nightmares, Nabiki just wasn't able to consider the sallow-skinned scrawny kid a serious threat.) In the end, it had taken Ranma, also sensing Peach Fuzz's growing desperation, siding with the sprite to change Nabiki's mind. And of course _that_ meant that instead of being done for the evening, Nabiki found herself with two more rituals to perform.

The first ritual, to bind Peach Fuzz to her, turned out to be one of the easiest that Nabiki had ever cast. True, it was moderately complex. Also true, Nabiki had reluctantly decided months before that the effort needed to acquire and bind a worthwhile non-abyssal familiar was simply beyond her current resources and so she hadn't so much as glanced at the ritual since (even then she was wary of the ulterior motives of the minor demons that obviously _wanted_ to be bound). But none of that mattered when the supposed 'victim' was not only not effectively resisting — as in the case of nonsapient animals and nature spirits — but eagerly _abetting_ her own enslavement. The ritual was over almost as soon as she finished the last chanted phrase to initiate the laughable 'contest of wills'.

But the last ritual more than made up the difference.

/oOo\

By now Nabiki's clothes were actually plastered to her body and her sweatband was saturated — sweat was beginning to ooze out and trickle down her forehead into her eyes — she was well past trembling and it was taking everything she had not to _shake_. Her voice was hoarse and the rhythm of her chant — this time in Esperanto for the extra oomph — was just a bit off. With the tiny fraction of her mind not dedicated to making the ritual work (and holding off her sister's growing fear battering at her control) she was wishing fervently that her sensei was a part of the circle. Unfortunately, since Nodoka didn't have even an indirect link to the Voice all her inclusion would have done was ruin any chance of success, so this time Nabiki was on her own while her sensei observed from the sideline. And while the ritual was almost complete she was also almost finished herself, fighting to keep her knees locked.

Then it was all she could do to reduce a jerk to a twitch and ruin everything herself, as a soft voice sounded in her head: _"Idiot. I know you bonded me to you so you could have the link to the Voice you needed to make this work, but a familiar _is_ far more useful than just that. You need my strength to get through this, so use it."_

Right, the link with a familiar cut both ways, and if she had either the energy or the concentration to spare she would have been kicking herself for not thinking more about what having a sapient familiar meant. But she'd had never seriously considered having a sapient familiar...

Nabiki didn't dare try to relax enough to mind-speak — wasn't even sure how, exactly — but she and her fiancé (or rather her _fiancée_, for this at least) had taken to communicating with each other with little emotion bursts when the situation was obvious. Now with what little attention she could spare she sent the new familiar sitting on her shoulder a sense of questioning ... of 'really?' (Fortunately, 'emotion messaging' needed very little 'bandwidth'.)

With a mental sigh, Peach Fuzz sent, _"Yes, I'm serious."_ A moment later, Nabiki felt her fatigue easing as energy was actually _pushed_ into her — a surprising amount, considering how tiny a creature a sprite was. Peach Fuzz thought, _"What do you know, it worked."_

With Peach Fuzz's gift filling her, Nabiki's tremors eased off, her voice strengthened, and she unlocked her knees and straightened up for the last few minutes of the ritual. She practically shouted out the final sealing phrases, and froze in place with hands clapped in front of her and held her breath, waiting.

/\

Akane had been prepared for the second hair-over-an-hour ritual to be as mind-numbingly boring as the first. It _was_ the same ritual, after all — right? And she couldn't even bring a book into her personal circle to keep herself occupied, something about 'the focus needed for reading interferes with the flow of power'. As if the way her mind had wandered the first time wouldn't do the same thing.

But it hadn't worked out that way. Certainly, outwardly everything was the same. But from the beginning she had felt a building pressure on her soul as if some presence was worming its way into her mind, changing her perceptions and twisting her thoughts. Her sister's chanting had taken on an otherworldly quality, the scent of the candles seemed to lift her off her feet to leave her helpless before any errant breeze, and the room had wavered and gone hazy as if she was floating deep in murky water.

This was everything wrong with magic, the unreality it made of the world, and by now it was taking everything she had not to run screaming from the room. Her clipped-short fingernails were digging into her palms, and she was only dimly aware of the blood dripping off her chin from where she'd bitten into her lip.

Then Nabiki's voice rose to almost a shout, her open hands clapped together, and in the ringing silence the world seemed to snap into focus — and Akane cried out, reeling as _something_ stabbed deep into her mind. She clutched at her head as she dropped to her knees, and the world went dark.

/\

As the world swam back into focus, Akane found herself lying on the floor with her head in Nodoka's lap, looking up at the older woman's worried face. Kasumi was crouched beside her holding her hand, Nabiki kneeling on the other side with the cute red-haired nature spirit form of her fiancé floating beside her, both girls as worried as their mother/de facto mother-in-law.

Akane smiled weakly up at her oldest sister. "So who's watching the fathers now?" she whispered. Not waiting for an answer, she levered herself up with a groan. "I'm all right," she said, again in a whisper. Grimacing, she forced her voice to strengthen. "What happened?"

"You fought the bond and it backlashed on you," the perky voice of Nabiki's new familiar announced. "You'll be fine, but I bet that hurt."

Akane growled as her gaze shifted to Nabiki's shoulder and the tiny brunette sitting there. "I was _not _—" Her voice chopped off as she realized just what she was seeing — a very tiny, very cute, very naked earth-haired winged woman. A woman she had never seen before, just heard her voice coming from a tiny sometimes-humanoid-shaped sense of shape buzzing about the room. And then Akane realized what she had seen just seconds earlier, and her gaze flashed back to Ranma — a completely _visible_ very _female_ Ranma. "Ranma, I can _see_ you!" she gasped out, then clutched at her head and mewed as another spike of pain seemed to slam through her head.

"Easy, Akane," Nodoka soothed, easing her back down to lie flat on the floor. "The backlash seems to have exacerbated your concussion from this morning. If I was your mother I would say that there would be no school tomorrow." She glanced over at Kasumi, getting her instant agreement before continuing, "If you stay in bed until I get home from work, we can see if the bond took — _not_ before then! Understood?"

Akane found herself grinning through her pounding headache and fighting an urge to laugh — what that would do to her head was terrifying to consider, but Nodoka had shifted her attention to Nabiki and Ranma. Her expression must have been formidable because the pair was _very _eager to agree.

Then Kasumi was dabbing disinfectant on her lip before Ranma again scooped her up from the floor and carried her to her bedroom (the feel of the nature spirit's bare breasts was as embarrassing as it had been the first time, even with her headache). Kasumi tucked her into bed and gently kissed her on the forehead as she'd used to just after their mother's death before turning out the lights and closing the door.

Akane waited as she listened to the retreating footsteps, then quietly slipped out of bed. Making her way over to the window, she looked down at the night-shaded lawn with its koi pond and bordering flowers and felt tears trickling down her cheeks that had nothing to do with the pain pounding in her head. The night was alive with tiny glowing naked winged people, dancing about each other in the air and drifting from flower to flower like so many giant humanoid bees.

Making her way back to bed, Akane smiled as she drifted off to sleep. Even if the bond hadn't taken, Nabiki would be able to perform the ritual tomorrow without a problem, because there was nothing to be afraid of anymore — she could _see_, her world was once again her sisters' world.


	9. Not-So-Alone Time

I do not own anything written by Rumiko Takahashi or Kosuke Fujishima.

* * *

Nabiki sighed as she leaned back against her and Ranma's Lunch Tree. She was feeling as naked as her lover in succubus-mode, without Ranma at the school in either form. But Akane was stuck at home in bed and Ranma had insisted on staying home as well to continue his (or rather, _her_, in this case) guard duty, so Nabiki had eaten lunch alone for the first time since the Saotomes' arrival at the dojo. And without Ranma at her back — or at least within easy calling distance — Nabiki found her old paranoia returning.

_Come on, girl, buck up,_ she thought to herself as she finished off the last of the as usual magnificent bento Kasumi had prepared. _You took care of yourself before Ranma arrived, you can do it now._ Not that she wanted to go back to being what she had been — in retrospect she could understand why nobody had much liked that lonely, bitter, paranoid girl, she didn't much like her, either. But just because she _wasn't_ that girl now didn't mean she'd turned into a damsel in distress out of a bodice-ripping romance! And with Nodoka for a sensei, she never would be.

Still, having the tree at her back was allowing her to _really_ relax for the first time since she'd left home — alone.

_Hey, at least I have school to pique my interest ... sometimes, at least. I wonder how Ranma's doing? After guard duty all night the night before, all night last night, and now all day today, Ranma must be bored out of her skull, even if she doesn't exactly have one. I wonder how she's doing? At least she has Peach Fuzz to keep her company — Peach Fuzz! Idiot!_

Straightening and closing her eyes, Nabiki mentally reached out for the bond with her new sprite familiar, and lurched back, knocking the back of her head on the tree trunk as her senses _exploded_ with fresh sensation: sight through a curtain of red hair of twisting, turning, spinning concrete and glass buildings flashing by; cool wind washing over her naked body, hair blowing and wings shaking and bouncing against her back; a continuous shriek of "Wheeeee!" resounding in her ears; gleeful excitement flooding through her.

Nabiki was only unable to maintain the link for a few seconds before sensory overload and vertigo slammed her back into her own body and her eyes flew open to the sight of the familiar — and steady — high school lawn, even if the view was spangled with fireworks from her head's collision with the tree. She leaned back against the trunk again, drawing a shaky breath.

A hesitant thought whispered in her mind, Peach Fuzz: _"Nabiki?"_

_"What was _that_?"_ Nabiki thought back, rubbing the back of her head.

_"Ranma was giving me a ride,_ Peach Fuzz responded. _Cherry Blossom was right, she can really _move_! What a rush!"_

Nabiki frowned. _"I thought Ranma was watching Akane."_

_"We are,"_ Peach Fuzz thought. _"Ranma needed a break, so we're making a short dive into the Voice. Only a shallow one,"_ she hastily added at Nabiki's instant concern, _"it's practically Here and Now. Ranma's safe enough, I'm with her so she won't get swept away."_

_"But what about Akane?"_

Nabiki again closed her eyes and cautiously reopened herself to the sprite's senses, and felt Peach Fuzz shrug. The world was steady, Peach Fuzz between the red-furred wings sprouting from Ranma's shoulder blades, one hand on each wing to keep herself in place. _"I have some other sprites watching Akane. I know we usually have the attention span of hummingbirds, but Ranma and I'll only be away a few minutes. What's up?"_

_"I was just checking to see how you all were doing. I'm glad to see you're keeping yourselves entertained."_

_"Better than Akane,"_ Peach Fuzz thought with a giggle. _"It's only lunchtime and she's all read out. It's all Kasumi can do to keep her in bed — if it wasn't for Nodoka saying she'd only check the bond if Akane stayed in bed, Kasumi wouldn't have a chance."_

Nabiki chuckled, _"Yeah, Akane's always been the more physical sister, she must be in the outermost ring of Hell."_

_"No, she isn't — not even close."_

Peach Fuzz's response was leached of all humor, and Nabiki instantly sobered. Apparently, there were some things sprites didn't joke about, even as flighty as they were. _"Well, sorry to interrupt your fun, I'll let you get back to it. I'll see you both in a few hours."_

_"No big, we should be getting back to Akane anyway, before her watchers get entranced by a particularly vibrant flower — Kasumi is _good_ when it comes to flowers. See you in a few hours."_

Nabiki let the link fade back to the normal barely-there presence in the back of her mind that she was going to have to get used to. She was smiling gently when she opened her eyes to find a student standing a few yards away, an odd look on his face. Nakadan Morimasa, an upperclassman and one of the 'clients' making monthly payments to her special bank account. She had been so caught up in her link with her familiar that she hadn't even noticed his empathic presence when he'd approached. _I'm going to have to watch that — no total immersion in Peach Fuzz's senses unless I'm in private or have Ranma watching out for me._ She already knew Peach Fuzz could communicate with her mind-to-mind without her needing to close her eyes.

Cocking an eyebrow as she sampled his shocked confusion, she asked, "Yes?"

"Uh ..." Morimasa shook himself out of whatever thought was distracting him. "That email you sent out looking for help locating where some scrolls belonged? I might have one for you."

For a moment Nabiki had no idea what he was talking about, until she remembered the previous afternoon after school and before Nodoka had gotten home from her business. She and Ranma had followed up on his suggestion, scanning in pieces of some of the scrolls Genma had stolen that Ranma had examined and insisted were harmless without some knowledge of ki, so she could email them to her list of 'clients' and ask for help finding their rightful owners. "Really." Nabiki's other eyebrow rose to join the first. "That was fast," she mused, "I only sent out the first email yesterday."

Morimasa shrugged, and handed her a print-out of one of the pictures she'd included in her email, along another print-out of a photo of a small temple with an address jotted down beneath it. "You got lucky, I have an uncle living in Chiba Prefecture and my family was visiting a few years ago when this one was stolen from a Buddhist temple there."

Nabiki frowned, examining the picture of the scroll. Much of the meaning was obscure, thanks to unfamiliar terminology, but she didn't see anything particularly Buddhist, or any mention of Chiba Prefecture. She asked, "How do you know the scroll has anything to do with this temple? Are you sure?"

"Pretty sure," he replied. "The description of the stolen scroll's contents was fairly detailed, and I paid attention — I was surprised that a Buddhist temple would have a scroll of esoteric martial arts techniques and the offered reward was substantial, at least to me at the time."

"All right, send me an email with everything you can remember, and I'll look into it and let you know how it pans out," Nabiki instructed. "But it'll be at least until after the martial arts gymnastics competition on Tuesday, things are a little busy for my family right now."

"And I'm just supposed to take your word on it?" Morimasa demanded, suspicion as plain on his face as in his emotional state.

Nabiki grinned mirthlessly at him. "Like you have a choice? But hey, if I cheat you, you won't be any worse off than you are now. So do you want to take a chance I'm being straight with you or not?"

"Yeah, I'll send you your details," Morimasa snarled, before turning to walk away. For a few seconds there, when he'd seen her smiling, he'd actually thought the rumors might be true and the Ice Queen might be human!

Nabiki watched him stalk away, fighting the temptation to rub at her temples. For a moment he had actually felt ... accepting? friendly? ... nonhostile, anyway, but he sure hadn't felt that way when he left. _Well, we'll see if he still feels the same way if this pans out and he doesn't have to make payments anymore._

Not that that might not cause its own problems down the road, if word spread. And it would, if not as rapidly as most rumors — blackmail victims weren't likely to talk about it too much, but that wasn't the same as not at all. In fact, just from what her empathic sense was picking up at school she suspected that it had already started since she'd let Aiko off the hook, after her sister had given Nabiki what she'd needed to find Gosunkugi's little lair. Having the oppressive miasma of fear and hatred that hovered around her fellow students in her presence continue to ease off into something more neutral was certainly welcome — not getting one splitting headache after another would be nice — but what did she do when one of her 'clients' decided she had gone soft and stopped making payments? She couldn't let him ... or her ... get away with it, her karmic debt to whichever imp had collected the information in the first place would come due and other 'clients' would be encouraged to follow suit. But ever since Ranma had come into her life the thought of releasing the information as she'd threatened had grown more and more intolerable, and she was worried over how her fiancé would react if she _did_ follow through.

_One problem at a time,_ Nabiki thought with a sigh as she rose to her feet. _In a few hours we'll know if we have an answer for this mess with the martial arts gymnastics competition ... and then there's the curse on Kasumi and Doc Tofu that we put off trying to break ... and it would be nice to know what Mara meant about Gosunkugi's father being a threat to Ranma out of _patriotism_ ... and what I do about a major demon's personal interest in me ... and how Ranma's going to deal with being a succubus when the mating urge hits..._

Now Nabiki _did_ give in to the temptation to rub at her temples, and this time her building headache had nothing to do with what her schoolmates thought of her.


	10. The grass isn't always greener

I do not own anything written by Rumiko Takahashi or Kosuke Fujishima.

* * *

From her position floating over the roof above Akane's bedroom, Ranma sighed with relief as she watched through the roof, and the walls and floor beneath it, as her mother stepped into the house through the front door and began to switch her shoes for house slippers. Possibly the most boring day of her life was over! Or the boring part, at least.

Of course, Ranma wasn't the only one that had spent the long hours hopelessly bored, and the redhead's sigh morphed into giggles as the faint echo of Nodoka's shout letting everyone know she was home sounded through Akane's window, and the youngest Tendo threw off the blanket that Ranma could only see a hint of and practically levitated out of bed. But to the currently-a-succubus's surprise, she didn't strip off her might-as-well-not-be-there pajamas and put on her might-as-well-not-be-there after-school clothes. Instead, she stepped over to the window and called out, "Ranma, get down here!"

Ranma froze, panic flashing through her — _She knows!_ For a moment she considered just quietly sneaking away.

"I'm waiting!"

Ranma gave up any thought of running away — they'd be training together, after all, no way to avoid her. Sighing resignedly, she dropped through the ceiling into Akane's room and winced at the blast of relieved irritation that hit her — Akane's enforced inactivity had _not_ put her in a good mood. Ranma asked, "How'd ya know?" Then giggled at the way Akane had spun around, then turned beet red at the sight of the naked redhead and promptly spun around to face the window again, embarrassment replacing irritation. The succubus added, "You'll get used to it, I did, kinda."

"Get used to what?" Akane asked, staring at the property wall, then suddenly froze before whirling around to face Ranma again. This time, her reddening face wasn't from embarrassment, and Ranma found herself instinctively floating backward, away from the sudden blast of anger.

_Oh, crap._

Stalking forward, Akane growled, "You haven't been peeking on the girls' showers at school, or me and Kasumi in the furo, have you?"

"I didn't mean to!" Ranma protested, then froze. _Oh, crap!_

"Didn't _mean _to? How do you _not mean to_ use your invisibility to peep on naked girls!?" Akane demanded, voice rising. If she wasn't rapidly approaching full panic mode, Ranma would have been impressed that Akane wasn't shouting yet — her student really was getting at least some self-control.

"I'm not even in the room, I can't help it, I can't hardly see dead things!" Ranma blurted out, waving her hands around in shooing off gestures.

"You what?" Akane paused in her steady stalk, frowning. "What does _that_ mean?"

"I have trouble seein' anything that's not alive — walls, cars, furniture, anything I can go through, it's hardly there. The denser it is the easier I can see _something_, but even solid steel's see-through!"

Akane stiffened, remembering the feel of bare skin against her own as the succubus Ranma carried her to her bed. _That_ meant — "So you've been looking at us right through our clothes this whole time and nobody knew!?"

Ranma started backing up again. Akane's hands had covered her breasts and crotch, but they'd clenched into fists as she resumed stalking toward the succubus. Ranma hastily said, "Nabs knows, Mom knows, Kasumi ..." She frantically tried to remember if they'd ever actually said anything to the oldest sister.

"Yes? And Kasumi?"

"I dunno, I can't remember! Wouldn't matter, though, not ta Kasumi."

Akane paused for a moment, considering feeling insulted for her sister, then shrugged it off. Ranma was right, after all — if Kasumi found herself needing to host a nudist party, she'd strip down with a cheerful smile and a faint blush and carry on. "And why didn't you tell _me_!?"

"Uh ... 'cause I thought you'd try ta kill me? Ya got the temper for it." Akane froze, anger suddenly mixed with shame, and Ranma said, "I can't help it, it doesn't turn off — ya think I _like_ seein' Mom an' Pop naked all the time? Would you like ta see _yer_ pop naked whenever ya see him _right through the wall_?"

Akane turned greenish at the thought, the last of her anger washed away by disgust. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath before muttering something about lions. Opening her eyes again, she giggled at the sight of Ranma halfway buried in her bedroom door. She stepped back as Ranma sighed in relief at her student's lightening mood. "Relax, Ranma, you get to live to see the sun set," she said with a teasing smile. "Now could you leave while I change ... oh. Right, no point, not like you haven't seen everything already, over and over." She blushed again, but just turned away toward her wardrobe and began stripping off her pajamas.

"Right, sorry 'bout that," Ranma mutter, rubbing her neck behind her loose hair drifting in the air as she eased her way back into the room.

Akane sighed. "Not your fault," she said as she tossed her pajamas on her bed and pulled underwear and her gi out of the wardrobe. "I just wish you'd told me earlier."

"Yeah, right, not after what ya called me when ya found out we were lying about Ranko."

Ranma's muttered response was just a hair too loud, and Akane froze as shame flashed through her. After a moment she finished tying the fastenings on her gi and turned to face a suddenly blushing Ranma, ignoring her own red cheeks (and suppressing her automatic instinct to cover breasts and crotch). Quietly, she said, "I guess not. For what it's worth, I'm sorry I called you ... sorry I said that. And I really really mean it, this time. Friends?"

Ranma stared at her for a long moment, 'tasting' Akane's mix of shame, regret and hope, then smiled. "Sure, friends. But don't think that means I won't kick yer ass when we're trainin'."

"Oh, _of course_ not," Akane replied, rolling her eyes and smiling back as relief flooded through her.

The two simply stood/floated smiling at each other for a long moment, until Ranma asked, "So, how did ya know I was on the roof?"

Akane shrugged. "I was lying in bed, mind drifting as I was dying of boredom, and I suddenly realized that I could sense you up there."

"You could? Cool! I guess we don't hafta ask Mom or Nabs if the bond took."

"I guess not." Akane strode past Ranma and opened the bedroom door. Forcing herself to turn back around to face the succubus (though her hands twitched), she said, "Come on, let's find them so they can tell us how it works."

"Right." Ranma floated through the wall to join Akane in the hall.

As they walked/floated toward the stairs, Akane added, "And tonight after practice, you and 'Nabs' are telling me everything there is to know about succubae."

"Uhhh ... maybe Nabs can do it."

"Coward."

"Hey, I'm not afraid a' nothin'!"

Akane was still laughing when they reach the foot of the stairs.

/oOo\

"So, nothing like a prayer?" Akane asked, the sighed with relief when Nabiki and Nodoka — the former in T-shirt and tight shorts and the latter in the keikogi and hakama she wore for workouts — shook their heads.

"I don't think so," Nabiki replied, Nodoka having already indicated that her student would be taking the lead. "True, the Western Initiates that came up with this use prayers, but they don't have to vocalize them — just thinking them is enough. I think the prayer is just a tool for focusing on the link, and since they generally link to various kami they worship — or used to — a prayer makes sense. You might need to come up with a mantra of some sort, but let's find out first if you can call Ranma by just concentrating."

Akane nodded and dropped to sit crosslegged on the wood floor of the dojo, then closed her eyes to better focus on the link she could sense between her and her sometimes-sensei. Oddly enough, that sense only went one way. Some quick experimentation had shown that Ranma could sense her when the redhead concentrated, but didn't have Akane's direction sense or constant sense of Ranma when she wasn't focused on something else. And of course when Ranma was in guy form neither could sense anything at all. (Nabiki had been especially relieved that the bond was still there when Ranma switched back to succubus, she'd commented that having to recast it just before the competition would have been no fun at all.)

_Focus, girl._ Letting the distractions drift away, Akane focused on the sense of _Ranma_ that seemed to shine at her core. Reaching out to it, she somehow 'pulled'. _Come!_

For a long moment nothing happened, and she was just opening her eyes to report a failure when suddenly that piece of 'Ranma' seemed to explode, flashing through her, stiffening every muscle as her breath gusted out in shock. She was vaguely surprised that her hair wasn't radiating out in a static afro POOF. She slumped, gasping.

_"Wow, was that weird!"_

Akane froze at the voice that she _wasn't_ hearing, at least not with her ears. "Ranma?"

_"Uh, yeah, who else?"_ The voice in her head certainly 'sounded' like succubus-Ranma, but ...

"But Nabiki didn't say anything about you talking in my head, just that I'd get some of your skill!"

"Actually, little sis, in a way I did, we just didn't think it through. I said that when the bond was active Ranma would probably be pulled into you."

"You did?" Akane opened her eyes, and promptly lost track of Nabiki's response as she saw her sister — her smooth, shapely, _sexy_ sister, with bare legs smoothly toned by the minimal exercise program she'd had before and now getting harder from the tougher regimen under her new sensei. Akane's eyes seemed to have a life of their own as they travelled up her sister's body — the fork in her legs covered by tight shorts tight enough, the thin shirt hugging firm breasts unencumbered by a bra and begging to be caressed —

Akane clapped her hands over her eyes, shouting "Out! Out! Out!" as she tried to _push_ against Ranma's presence inside her. A moment later the presence was gone. Carefully peeking between her fingers, she sighed in relief to find her sister was back to her pretty but non-_attractive_ (if currently confused) self. The naked succubus floating next to her looking equally confused was as cute as ever, but also not _attractive_. And Nodoka was as beautiful as ever — and also obviously confused.

Akane jerked to her feet, shouting, "Why didn't you _warn_ me!?"

The other three exchanged glances. Nodoka asked, "Warn you of what, dear?"

"That when I looked at people, they'd be ... be ..." Akane choked, cheeks turning red.

The confusion on Nabiki's face cleared as she fought and failed to restrain herself, and she bent over clutching her sides as she howled with laughter. She finally fought herself under control when Akane's hand's curled into fists. She straightened, wiping at her eyes. "Oh, wow, _that's_ what that flash of lust was about. Were you _perving_ on me, little sister?"

Akane growled as her blush turned fiery, and Nabiki held up her hands. "Easy, girl, I _did_ warn you. When I first told you about this I said that the champions would pick up some of the attitudes of the kami they bonded to, when they summoned their aspect. Just what kind of attitudes did you expect a succubus to have?"

"You did?" Akane asked in a small voice, her hands unclenching.

"Yes, I did, you just forgot about it. So did everyone else, actually, or just not think it through. We weren't playing a prank on you, really."

"Oh." _Though I might have deserved it, after what I called Ranma._ Akane looked over at the succubus. "And you're like that all the time, for everyone?"

Ranma rubbed at the back of her head. "Well, whenever I'm like this, yeah."

"Even guys?"

"Yeah, even guys," the succubus admitted, cheeks tinted pink.

Akane asked, "When you turn back into a guy, how do you _bear_ it?"

Ranma shrugged. "I try not ta think about it. Helps that when I'm a guy I'm not attracted ta anybody."

"Oh." Akane filed that little fact away for later, there were more important things to think about right now. "I guess we could practice while merged alone —"

All three of the others were shaking their heads. Nodoka said, "At the competition you're going to have an audience."

"Right," Ranma agreed. "If ya aren't used ta it by then, at least a bit, you're gonna be so distracted Kodachi'll hand you yer head."

"Oh." _I seem to be saying that a lot._

The more the youngest Tendo learned about what being a succubus was actually like, the more sympathy she felt for the poor boy — though Ranma seemed to be adjusting to his ... her ... new nature well enough. "A lion is a lion," she murmured. _But I don't want to be a lion._ She said more loudly, "I have to think about this," and strode past the other three and out of the dojo.

/oOo\

Dressed again in her pajamas, Akane stood at the window of her lightless bedroom and stared blindly out at the late night. Or was it early morning? She'd tried to sleep, but sleep had been impossible after spending most of the day in bed and the entire evening wrestling with the decision she had to make. She didn't want to be like Ranma, she _didn't _— her stomach churned whenever she thought about it. But she didn't want to hand Kodachi the victory, either, and she couldn't have one without the other, and so her mind had spent hours circling around the same two contradictory points.

Then a hint of movement caught her eye, and she focused on the house across the street, along the peak of the roof — another hint of movement, a shape...

"Ranma, across the street," she called up softly to the succubus she could sense again hovering above the roof over her bedroom.

"Yeah, it's Kodachi, she's been there awhile," Ranma replied. "But she can see me somehow, she knows I'm here. She's an ambusher, so she's keepin' her distance."

Somehow, _knowing_ the other girl was out there, haunting her, crystallized Akane's thoughts. "Ranma, when we go train with the Amazons tomorrow we'll need to remember to let them know about her, make sure she can't see us when we ... merge."

"So we're still on?"

"Yes, we're still on. Good night."

" 'Night, Akane, see ya in the mornin'."

Akane turned from the window and climbed back into bed, asleep almost as soon as her head hit the pillow.

* * *

Thanks much for all the support of my decision to cut back the size of my chapters, I really appreciate it. Back in the beginning the most common complaint that my chapters were too short — though admittedly those chapters were smaller then even my newly cut-back ones have been so far.

**skywiseskychan:** Yeah, that would be an interesting plot twist, with Nabiki snowed under with people happy to help her out in any way they can whether she needs or wants it or not! Nothing like being _very_ popular for all the wrong reasons...


	11. Acclimatizing is not fun

I do not own anything written by Rumiko Takahashi or Kosuke Fujishima.

* * *

Still dressed in her pajamas, a bleary Akane stumbled into the family room, rubbing at her eyes — in spite of her enforced bedrest the previous day, the late (or rather early) hours the night that followed hadn't been close to enough.

"Whoa, watch it!" The succubus floating next to Akane caught her arm. "If ya want ta eat, don't kick yer breakfast across the room."

Akane dropped her hands and looked down to find she'd almost walked into the low table in the center of the room, already laden with one of Kasumi's divine breakfasts and Nabiki wearing her workout clothes and her father with the inevitable newspaper seated there. "Oops, sorry," she muttered, dropping down next to Nabiki and picking up her chopsticks while Ranma floated off to one side.

Nabiki waited long enough for Akane to make a dent in her breakfast, then finally asked, "Well, are we still on?"

Akane nodded with a sigh. "Yeah, we're still on. But Ranma, the next time someone asks me to fill in for them like this and it looks like I'm taking it seriously, please kick me."

Ranma chuckled (_not_ giggled) from where she was floating by the door to the yard, causing Soun to jerk slightly before determinedly focusing back on the paper. "Ya got it!" she agreed with perhaps a touch too much enthusiasm (though only a touch — Akane thought that it would have been impossible to have too _little_ enthusiasm).

Ranma continued, "But we're gonna hafta wait till tomorrow ta get ya used ta having me in you, I won't be at the practice tonight. Nabiki, where's Kodachi's school? I wanna check out how she's doin' with her own practice."

Nabiki raised an eyebrow. "Using your succubus nature to spy in the competition? How ... practical. But remember, she can see you somehow."

Ranma shrugged, bouncing her bare breasts. Akane hastily looked away from the sight, blushing furiously as she remembered how she'd felt looking at her sister the previous evening. _It's not fair! Am I going to be able to look at _anybody_ without thinking about ... that?_ She forced the worrying thought away, focused again on the others.

" ... don't look up, I'll just peek through the ceiling," Ranma was saying.

Nabiki nodded thoughtfully. "That's not a bad idea," she mused, "but I don't like Akane missing out on getting acclimatized. Who knows how long she'll need?" She glanced at Akane out of the corner of her eye, and grinned slyly. "So I have a _marvelous_ idea."

/\

_"How did Nabiki manage to talk us into this?"_ Akane grumbled to her 'passenger' as she stalked toward the front gates to Furinkan High, eyes fixed firmly ahead and _not_ on anyone that might be sharing the street with her. At least she and Ranma had waited until they'd left home to merge, so she hadn't seen her sisters or Nodoka or _especially_ her father ... after.

_" 'Cause she's right, this's the best way ta get ya ... what was the word Nabs used? ... acclimatized before ya hafta fight in front a' all the spectators,"_ Ranma replied. Not that Akane thought the succubus was all that happy about it, either, from the tone of her 'voice'. Ranma confirmed her host's observation a moment later by adding, _"Still, even if it's only a Saturday half-day, this's gonna be the longest day ever — boring as usual and I can't even snooze through it."_

Akane giggled. _"I'll tell Nabiki you said that, you know how she feels about sleeping in class."_

Then she walked through the gates and missed Ranma's panicky response as she froze at the sight of all the students — all the healthy, vibrant, sexy, _desirable_ students, male and female — scattered around the yard in clumps, waiting for school to start.

"Hey, Akane!"

She turned at the shout, and blushed furiously at the sight of her two best friends hurrying toward her. As she fought to keep her eyes from wandering over Sayuri and Yuka's nubile bodies, and tried to ignore how soaked her panties were getting, she decided that Ranma was both right and wrong — even with it being a Saturday half-day at school, it was going to be a long day but anything but boring.

/oOo\

Akane shook her head, trying to keep the sweat out of her eyes, and stepped to one side. Ignoring the long ribbon that spiraled through the space she had just occupied, she hurled the club she'd held in one hand even as she tried to wrap her own undulating ribbon around Ryoga's feet. But Ryoga simply stepped on her ribbon even as his own ribbon swept up to knock her club just far enough off its trajectory that it spun past his ear, and _his_ club smacked into her forehead, rocking her head back. Before she had a chance to recover his ribbon wrapped around her back foot, _yanked_, and her lungs emptied in one gust of breath as she slammed down on her back.

As she fought to refill her lungs, Ryoga walked over and offered her a hand up. "Not bad," he said, "you're beginning to think in combinations. _But_ you got it in the wrong order — it's too easy to avoid the ribbon aimed at your feet without a distraction."

"Like a club to the head," Akane said with a sigh.

"Like a club to the head," Ryoga agreed, chuckling. His chuckles cut off abruptly, though, and his head snapped away when Akane stretched.

Akane stared quizzically at the blush mounting the Lost Boy's cheeks, then glanced down at herself and stiffened. She was wearing the white leotard she'd be competing in, and it was soaked with sweat, plastered against her body — and almost translucent, the black fabric of her bra visible through the fabric.

In a strangled voice, Ryoga said, "Why don't you take a break? You've been working harder than usual, without Ranma here to split my attention." Without waiting for an answer, he scooped up the club he'd bounced off her forehead and strode away toward where his other weapons were lying on the ground.

Wryly, Akane thought, _Well, at least _one_ boy isn't a pervert_. Though after the day she'd just had, she'd acquired a reluctant sympathy for perverts — it had been _hard_ being constantly aroused by the bodies surrounding her everywhere she looked. She'd finally gotten an extra-absorbent pad from the stock the school nurse kept for the girls that failed to plan ahead and done her best not to focus on _anyone_. She'd walked into a couple doors, but it had gotten her through the school half-day. She didn't know how Ranma did it.

"Fool Girl getting better."

Akane winced at the nickname Ryoga's wife had bestowed on her when she'd learned that Akane had accepted a challenge for a fight in a style she didn't know at all. Of course, that was Ryoga's _second_ wife. _Okay, maybe he's just a _little_ bit perverted_, she thought. She turned just in time to see her sensei's first wife lightly rap Xian Pu on the head.

"Be polite," Pa Fum lightly scolded, then turned to Akane and handed her a canteen. "P-please forgive my rude co-wife," she said, "she just doesn't like mispronouncing people's names."

"Already forgotten," Akane said. Not that she believed it for a moment, but Pa Fum was too nice to fight with. The youngest Tendo greedily sucked down half the canteen's water, then poured the rest over her head. She added, "Besides, she didn't call me anything I haven't called myself a couple times a day since I accepted the challenge — it really _was_ a stupid thing to do. I don't know what I was thinking." She dropped down to lie on the grass, and the two Amazons sat down next to her.

"Fool —" **whap** "— Akane eager to prove strong, forget limits," Xian Pu said. "Good warrior never forget limits."

"So how am I supposed to get better, then?"

"It not that warrior forget limits..." Xian Pu fell silent for a few moments, then spoke rapid-fire Chinese to her co-wife.

Pa Fum translated, "Xian Pu says that it isn't that a warrior shouldn't push her limits while training, that's how she makes herself a great warrior. But in battle a warrior that forgets her limits will soon be dead, perhaps some of her shield sisters with her."

Xian Pu nodded vigorously. "Akane train hard, is good, try what cannot do, is good — when train. Try in contest, is ..." Another word in Chinese, and Pa Fum finished, "... humiliating."

_Not just in a competition_, Akane thought, blushing faintly as she remembered her first match with Ranma and how badly outclassed she'd been. Still, that match had given her a great deal of respect for her sensei's skill in the Art — which was probably the point, now that she thought about it.

Akane glanced up at the two Amazons, wondering why they'd fallen silent, to find them staring off to the side. Curious, she sat up to see Ryoga a few dozen yards away running through a kata she didn't recognize, one full of short, heavy blows. For a moment, her imagination served up an image of the boy with his shirt off, all flowing grace and rippling muscles ... she quickly looked back at the two girls, blushing furiously. The desire to jump anything with two legs had left her when she'd separated from Ranma after the school day ended, but the _memory_ didn't go away so easily. She wondered again just how Ranma could deal with that need, day after day. But she wasn't finding herself attracted to girls all of a sudden, not now, so at least _they_ were mostly safe to look at.

Only something was bothering her, something about the two girls' ... expressions? Body language? _Something_ was ringing alarm bells. While the two girls weren't _angry_ with their husband, they weren't _happy_ with him, either. She didn't know how she knew, but she did. Perhaps something she'd picked up from Ranma while they'd been merged? _Worry about it later._ For a long moment Akane considered just ignoring it, it wasn't like they were lifelong friends, after all. But they'd been nice enough while she'd been training with the Amazons, never laughing at her during the clumsy first evening. And besides, she'd seen Xian Pu practice her own Art and was hoping to pick up a few pointers later.

"Okay, what's wrong with Ryoga?" she asked. "Anything I can help with? I thought he'd accepted you as wives, he isn't thinking of backing out, is he?" She wasn't really sure how she felt about that...

"Oh, no, he's fine there," Pa Fum quickly reassured her. "Most Wanderers are, the promise of a family they can come home to but won't have to worry about when they aren't there wins them over. No, he's just ..."

"Husband too too bad at sex," Xian Pu finished bluntly when her co-wife's voice trailed off.

"Now Xian Pu, be nice," Pa Fum admonished, blushing furiously. "We don't _know_ he's bad at sex. Maybe if we could just keep him from fainting at the sight of a bare breast he'd be a marvelous lover."

Xian Pu gave Pa Fum a _look_ and she seemed to shrink slightly. The younger Amazon winced at the sight and reached over to pull her into a hug, softly speaking in Chinese until she relaxed. Xian Pu tightened her embrace for a moment and let go of Pa Fum, then glanced over at a blushing Akane, grinned slyly and said, "No happen. Sex like Art, beginner too too bad — Xian Pu _know_, both sides. But Husband learn, if stay awake."

_Okay, so maybe he's not perverted at all, just the opposite,_ Akane thought distractedly. As she desperately tried to come up with a change of subject that wouldn't involve learning more than she'd ever wanted to know about other people's sex lives, her mouth took on a life of its own and said, "Have you asked Ranma for help?"

The Amazons stared at her, eyes widening. Pa Fum repeated, "Ask Ranma?"

_Why did I _say_ that?_ Akane wailed to herself. "Sure," she babbled, "she's a sex demon I mean she's a sex spirit I mean he turns into a sex nature spirit and wouldn't he I mean she be able to help or know what to do or —" She clapped her hands over her mouth as her blush went from red to fiery. "Shutting up now," she mumbled through her fingers, looking down at the grass as the other two girls started to laugh. She didn't even know if Ranma could really help, they hadn't had the talk about succubae she'd threatened Ranma with yet.

Pa Fum embraced the blushing girl. "Actually, that's a good idea," she said, fighting giggles. "I don't know if Ranma will be able to do anything — or want to — but it won't hurt to ask, thank you." She let go and sat back, then glanced over at her husband, Akane's eyes following her gaze to find her temporary sensei walking towards them. "And it seems break time is over."

Akane grabbed her ribbon's handle and one of her clubs, thinking as she scrambled to her feet that she'd never been happier to get back to training.

* * *

Poor prudish Akane, she isn't going to be quite so prudish by the time this story is done... ^_^

For the many people that don't read my _Chained World_ story, I know I'm still late. Partly that's because of my summer vacation, but also because I did something I almost never do — decide one of my subplots was getting off-track and throw out several days' worth of writing and starting over. And while I've caught up on my daily wordage, I can now add writing more than I end up using in the chapter. Ah, well, that just means I'll be updating faster _next_ month. However, _next_ month I'll probably be skipping _First Chapters_ again (darn it!). I'll be helping a long-time friend and her family move from California to Wyoming, and it'll eat up most of a week. Again, we'll see.

As always, the reviews are great!


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